


Eret III Drabbles

by tysonrunningfox



Series: Festerverse [7]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Kidfic, angsty, eret iii - Freeform, everyone's an oc, festerverse, if you don't know who eret iii is this won't make any sense, in festerverse, like this goes with eret iii, not a stand alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:08:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 57,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21652003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysonrunningfox/pseuds/tysonrunningfox
Summary: Drabbles that take place during the story of Eret III, multiple POVs. Chronological Order.
Relationships: Arvid Hofferson/Aurelia Haddock, Eret III/Fuse Thorston, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson, Ingrid Hofferson/Smitelout Jorgenson
Series: Festerverse [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/832755
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. Hiccup and Ingrid

**Author's Note:**

> Hiccup POV. Between Chapters 9 and 10 of Eret III.

Hiccup is chatting with Snotlout when Ingrid Hofferson walks up, looking more like her mother than anyone really has a right to and leaning against the side of a nearby building, biting her nails like Astrid never would. 

“Ingrid, are you waiting for me?” Snotlout asks, and Hiccup is more wildly jealous than he usually is of his cousin’s comfortable rapport with Astrid’s family. 

“No, I wanted to talk to the chief.” 

“To me?” Hiccup points to his chest and looks around, like there’s another chief nearby she could be mistaking him for. 

“Yeah, to you, that’s why I said ‘the chief’.” She rolls her eyes but she’s smiling, a nervous sort of smile that makes Hiccup nauseous, because anyone who looks that much like Astrid should be able to talk to him. Anyone who looks that much like Astrid should be his too. 

“Well, umm…” Hiccup looks at Snotlout, who shrugs and waves at him and Ingrid before disappearing into the crowded square. Hiccup turns to her and gestures at nothing, sudden concern flooding his chest. What if Ingrid is just the messenger? What if Eret needed to talk to him but couldn’t or… “Is everything ok? What’s up?”

“Everything is fine,” she shrugs, standing away from the building and propping one hand on her hip. She’s taller than Astrid, squarely at his eye level, and it’s absolutely bizarre. Her smile is cocky, cocky and vulnerable and like nothing he’s ever seen on Astrid’s face. “This isn’t about Eret or my mom or anyone important.” 

He doesn’t deny that Astrid is important, even though he probably should, instead waving her along beside him and walking towards a more private side street, “what’s it about then?” 

“Me,” she walks like she’s never had to sneak up on anything, nonchalantly kicking pebbles and comfortably claiming space next to him, like she walks with the chief every day. 

“You’re important.” 

“Come on, cut the crap. I’m not important, not to you,” her hatchet swings at her hip, an axe Hiccup doesn’t recognize strapped to her shoulder, clanging as she shrugs. “I don’t really know anyone who’s explored like you have and I was wondering if you had any advice.” 

“You’re going exploring?” 

She tucks bangs behind her ear and fiddles with the end of her braid. Twitchy. Unsure beneath all that bravado. He doesn’t remember if Astrid was unsure at twenty, he didn’t pay nearly enough attention back when he could have. 

“Spitleaf Ingermann and I are,” she sighs when she says it, kicking a pebble with too much force. 

“Well, when are you leaving? Because you might as well go South and escape the snow.” 

“Yeah, that’s what we’re thinking,” she nods, “I want to leave as soon as possible, but I’m still getting supplies together. And going south means packing fewer parkas.” 

“Good idea.” He’s not sure what to tell her. 

The part of him that can’t separate her from Astrid wants to convince her to stay. None of his adventures seem glamorous in retrospect, and some of them are downright horrifying if he thinks about a young, green Astrid doing the same thing. The bandits don’t seem funny, the hungry nights are far too harsh. 

But he also remembers being twenty and tied down and resentful, and maybe if someone had understood his urge to go, he would have come back sooner. 

“I think…I think it’s a good idea,” he nods, “what’s the hurry though? If you gave me a few days, I could help you assemble some gear. There’s at least four bedrolls in my barn that you’re welcome to.” 

“Because I look like my mom?” She snorts, either missing his blush or ignoring it entirely. Something tells him it’s the second option. “It’s finally coming in handy.” 

“Because travelers help each other,” he swallows the urge to blindly win her favor, no matter how wonderful it is to imagine her going home and telling her mom how cool he is. “But if you’re running away from something, it’s probably not the best reason to leave.” 

She raises her eyebrow at him and he wonders how much she knows. “Is that advice from experience, chief?” 

“Uh well—”

“I’m not running from anything, I’m just sick of confrontation.” She shrugs and crosses her arms, glancing sideways at him like he’s about to lash out and she intends to fight back. “I’ve turned down twenty three marriage proposals in the last five years. I’m done with the politics.” 

“Not the marrying kind?” 

The restless nineteen year old in the back of his head is in love. He squashes it, putting on his most fatherly voice, “this part is absolutely from experience. That’s not the best reason to go traveling either.” 

She laughs, “I’m more of a one woman kind of girl, chief.” 

“Oh?” He frowns then it hits him, his eyebrows disappearing under his hair, “Oh. You and Spitleaf—oh.” 

“And that reaction is why we’re leaving,” she narrows her eyes in a way that’s all Astrid with a malicious curl of her lips that he’s never seen. “I’d like to guiltlessly lop the head off of the next few hundred people who have a problem with it.” 

“I don’t have a problem with it,” he shakes his head, “I mean, you know Gobber and—and it just took me aback because you’re mom doesn’t—she isn’t and you look so much like—” He stops himself before she takes the axe out, “Congratulations?” 

“I see where Eret gets it,” she scoffs, shaking her head in Astrid’s old way that meant she loved him no matter what boneheaded thing he was up to. It hurts, a sharp knife dragging across an old scar. “And even if you don’t have a problem, other people do. And frankly,” she turns to him, one finger pointed menacingly in his direction, comfortable like she threatens the chief every day, “frankly, I was just sticking around to protect Eret’s secret, but now that’s out.” 

Her glare is almost as intimidating as her mother’s. 

“He deserves to know.” 

“He doesn’t deserve to walk in on you and my mom screaming at each other about him.” 

“Fair enough,” he sighs, and it’s so easy to remember that it was impossible to win an argument with Astrid. That’s why he walked out, it was easier than pushing a rock uphill while she spat fire at him. “But…but I’m glad he knows.” 

“He really hates you,” she pauses and bites her lip, gauging his reaction before she says anything else. “He’s a weird kid, you know? Charming weird, not ‘picks his dragon’s nose and eats it’ weird, but he’s not like the rest of us. I think he’s like you. I think we were good for him.” 

“You probably were.” 

“My Dad doesn’t make you out to be so agreeable, chief. I half expected you to try and tag along on my adventures.” 

“As tempting as the offer is—”

“It’s _not_ an offer.” 

“I do have my mess to clean up.” 

She studies him for a moment, hands on her hips, “you know, I was always kind of hoping he’d put it together himself. It’s not that hard of a problem, I was always waiting for him to sit down at dinner one day and ask if he’s related to the chief.” 

“I don’t think he saw me enough to make the comparison.” 

“Probably. I should have helped with that.” There it is, that Astrid tendency to heft the whole world on her shoulders, and Hiccup is happy she’s leaving. Happy she’s doing something for herself in a way her mother never quite managed. 

“Does your mom know you’re going?” 

“She keeps nagging me to plan more, to know where I’m going to land each night or something like it’s a pillaging tour of the coastline,” Ingrid shakes her head, and Hiccup is left with no doubt that Astrid argues like she used to. She’s probably still right, too. 

“She loves you. She wants to make sure you’re prepared.” 

“I have a Zippleback and an axe, I’m not worried about it.” 

“Stay away from pirates,” he nods, “they look like easy targets, but they normally have more bite than you expect. I’d stick to the coast, enough fish for the dragons and that way you get to see all the cities.” 

“Thanks,” she smiles, “that’s exactly what I was looking for. I probably would have gone after the pirates.” 

“That doesn’t shock me at all.” 


	2. Wedding Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid POV. Takes Place after Chapter 13.

Astrid is the last one in the mead hall, draining a mug of her wedding mead and staring at the door. Hiccup lurks outside, peeking in every few minutes, making sure she hasn’t actually dashed out on him. Stormfly is back at home—Astrid is coming back to his _home_ —with Toothless, and unless Astrid’s tolerance has quadrupled since…at some point, she wouldn’t have been able to sneak past him after this much mead. 

He opens the door to peek again and she’s walking towards him, stumbling slightly. He steps inside and sidles up next to her, unthinkingly looping his arm around her waist. She squirms against his grip, shoving on his shoulder and glaring at him. She smiles. She claps her hand over her mouth and laughs. A surprised sort of laugh that’s better than crying. 

“You have our son’s fist print on your cheek.” 

“He hits really hard,” he tightens his grip on her and drags her a little faster, a little more sure. No one is joking about a consummation this time and he’s glad. No one is slipping his young wife mead like they can’t smell Astrid on his skin, in his hair, in his every thought. 

“He hits like me.” She smells like mead and is entirely too warm against his forearm. She shoves him off and walks a few steps ahead, determined for a moment before her steps falter and she looks lost. “And to your house now, right.” 

“Our house, Astrid.” 

“Your house,” she shrugs, crossing her arms. There’s blood on the side of her dress from Eret’s face and he hopes the boy is ok with Rolf. At least Hiccup knows Rolf and trusts him, and he’s at least loyal to Fishlegs and Fishlegs would never let any harm come to Eret. In some perverse way, this is his first real parenting decision, the first time they juggled a child _together_. 

Aurelia and Stoick are with Phlegma. Gobber said it was important to have a wedding night for appearances sake, and Aurelia left willingly, without eye contact or flair. 

“Our house. You live there too now—”

“Don’t remind me,” she scoffs and shakes her head, falling into step beside him almost accidentally. Still beautiful, aging way better than he is. If he’d had a little more mead and she weren’t so damn cold he might be able to trick himself into thinking that he’s twenty and doing this right the first time.

The new ring on her finger is daintier than the old one, decorated gleaming blue by chips of Stormfly’s scales. He tried to make something that she’d like in the vain, desperate hope that she’d look anything but put upon when he slid it onto her finger. It didn’t work. 

She catches him looking and holds her hand out in front of her, nose wrinkling in the moonlight, “It looks weird.” 

“I think it looks—well, I like how it looks. I like weird.” 

“I know you do.” She starts toying with it, spinning it around her finger and tugging it against a bent knuckle. “It fits better. My—the other one was always a little loose. It’d fall off when my hands got wet.” 

“I made it myself.” 

“I know,” she scowls at him, “it has Hiccup written all over it.” 

“I hoped you might—I don’t know, I hoped you might like it. Maybe.” 

“It fits.” She shrugs and shakes her head. “It’s fine.” 

“That’s…that’s probably the best I can hope for, isn’t it?” 

She doesn’t answer and they walk the last steps to _their_ house in silence. He shuts the door behind them and she pauses in the middle of the room, glaring at the rolled up bear skin rug in the corner. He feels stupid for arguing for it, for wanting it, but at the same time he doesn’t want to let it go. That rug belongs to them, as an entity, and might be the only thing left besides Eret that they truly share. 

A sullen sixteen year old bruiser and a rug. It’s the first time in his whole crazy life that the odds have felt truly against him, but he shakes it off, because he’s a leap closer than he has been for the last decade. 

“It looks just the same. I still feel like I should go up to the loft and you’ll be there sketching something with Toothless snoring in the corner.” She sighs and tucks her bangs behind her ear, setting her jaw and looking at him. “We should probably let Toothless inside. He doesn’t need to stay out in the barn it’s not…I mean—”

“I get it, there’s no need for _privacy_ ,” he looks at his feet and shrugs, “it’s—it’s alright though, he and Bang are making friends. They were having some issues, but Stormfly is helping.” He wipes his hands on his pants and looks everywhere but at her, “I’ll bring him in later. Do you…”

“Hiccup?” She’s looking right at him, eyes wide, hair shining in the moonlight sifting through the recently repaired window. “Is your face ok?” 

“My face?” He laughs, “what about my face?” 

“Eret,” the name catches in her throat and she takes a step towards him, her hand hovering over his cheek for a too long moment before cupping his jaw. “Eret hit you really hard, your cheek is swelling already.” 

“I’ll ice it after you go to bed. You should probably go to bed, you’re—you drank too much, it was a long day.” He leans into the touch and her thumb strokes over his cheek, stinging across the blooming bruise and tingling everywhere else. Her fingers trail down his throat, pausing at the corner of his exposed collarbone and lingering. He gasps.

“For—what do you say? For old times’ sake?” She smiles, not really happy, just wistful in a way he understands so well. The last fifteen years of strange, conflicted loneliness painted on her face. “Pretend that we didn’t—that _I_ didn’t do this under duress for a few minutes.” 

“Are you…are you saying?”

“I don’t know.” Her hand slides down his front, warm and comfortingly firm against his heartbeat. “It’s stupid. Never mind. I’ll…I’m assuming Eret is going to be upstairs? In your old room? I’m just going to go sleep this off—”

“No,” he reaches out and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I—we—the bed, my bed—wait no, _our_ bed is really big. It’s cold with only one person.”

“I can’t believe you’d _suggest_ that,” Astrid stiffens under his hand. 

“Sorry,” he lets her go, “I thought that’s what you meant with the ‘for old times’ sake’ but now I think that means you probably want to wrench my arm or something—mmph!” 

She kisses him, flinging her arms around his neck and pushing him back towards the bedroom. He fumbles for a moment, tripping over his own feet before his hands fall to her waist, fisting in the fabric of her dress. His shoulder runs into the doorframe and he winces, whining open mouthed against her cheek. 

“Ouch.” 

“You’re fine.” 

“I’m so much more than fine,” he kisses her again, panting against her lips. “So so so much better than fine.” 

She pushes him back onto the bed, ignoring his grunt when his leg knocks against the wooden frame with a thunk. Then she’s on top of him, straddling his waist, combing her hands through his hair.

They don’t pause to light the torches and her fingers are clumsy and too rough as she yanks his shirt over his head, shoving his pants down. His hands tangle in her belt, the fabric of her skirt and she yanks her dress over her head, wonderfully un-self-conscious when she tosses it aside and leans down against him, kissing him again like it’s normal. Wonderfully, wonderfully normal. 

She gasps when his hands find their way under her bindings, lips hot and remarkable against the side of his neck. Everything is familiar, so unbearably familiar, like it’s sixteen years ago and twenty five all at once, like they’ve done this every day. And he lets himself entertain the idea for a dangerous minute. He lets himself pretend that he’s come home to Astrid every day for the last thirty years, that sometimes she came home to him. 

That they always kissed hello and laughed about keeping it private from the kids. That they shared a bed and a home and a life together. That her curves under his fingertips aren’t novel, that they’re familiar and wonderful and that he’s felt them change and shift for thirty close, happy years. 

She whimpers when he kisses her chest, her eyes fluttering and staying shut, and he doesn’t let himself ask what—who—she’s thinking about. She fumbles with his belt before jerking his pants down, her hand slipping hot and sure inside of his underwear and gripping him. She gasps against his neck, his name on her lips, and it’s almost too much after this many years, after this much lonely silence in a big cold bed. 

“Slow down,” he whispers, shivering when she laughs against the side of his neck, her breath tickling the damp skin left behind by her kisses. She smells like mead and the herbs from her bath and he closes his eyes, his hands tight around bare hips. 

“Just like really old times,” she smiles against his skin, “going way back there.” 

“I’m glad this is funny to you.” 

“It’s about all that’s funny to me.” 

She sinks onto him with a gasp and his eyes slip shut at the warmth, the closeness he never seemed to properly commit to memory. And it’s so much better on a bed, the soft mattress cushioning his shoulders while she rocks on top of him, harsh breath in his ear while she falls apart with him, around him, trembling while her knees clamp at his sides. It’s so much better that they can curl under the furs together after, her quiet mumbling about drinking too much as he wraps an arm around her and holds her close to his chest. 

And it’s best because she doesn’t shove him off. 


	3. Morning After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid POV. Takes place after Chapter 13.

The light is coming from the wrong side, an unfamiliar East facing window leaving Astrid’s aching head vulnerable to the morning. She reaches for the blankets, freezing at the unfamiliar woolen quilt under her hands. This isn’t her bed, this isn’t her room. The slow, smooth breathing beside her isn’t Eret’s snore, the silver band around her finger is too thin and suddenly cold against her skin. 

She opens her eyes and Hiccup is blinking slowly, sleepy, messy, gray hair tousled across his forehead. The corner of his lip twitches and he wipes his hand—silver band glimmering on one of those long, thin, blacksmith scarred fingers—across his face. 

“How’s the head?” 

“What are you talking about?” It comes out angrier than she expects as she sits up and yanks the quilt tight around her torso. Hiccup props himself up on an elbow, all skinny, unfamiliar muscles and scars she doesn’t recognize. She cradles her forehead in her hand and tries not to throw up. 

“You drank a lot last night—”

“I remember,” she spits, rubbing her temple and shivering at the morning chill air against her bare back. She’s suddenly keenly aware of Hiccup’s thigh against her knee and she jerks back from him, curling her knees to her chest. “I have to go pick up Eret, I—”

“Hey, there’s no rush,” he rests his hand on her shoulder, his palm warm and too small and callused in all the wrong places, and this is worse than waking up alone, worse than her own cold bed in her own house. 

“Don’t touch me.” 

His hand slips away, leaving a ghost of warmth behind on her skin, a whisper of last night, of those few hours when she wasn’t so gods-damned miserable. 

“Hey, Astrid—”

“What the Hel did I do?” She sighs and rubs her eyes, suddenly aware of the situation, overwhelmed by the permanence of all of it. She signed over her soul for the future of Berk, like she’d always promised to do as a child, like she’d eventually grown out of. Her head throbs. Her still healing hands itch for her axe, to chop something. 

“Well, you uh, married me. You got a lot of hugs. You broke up a fight between—”

“I know!” She snaps, “I know. My sons…”

Arvid should be with her. Arvid left with his father. Her family isn’t her family anymore, she signed into a new one. 

“It’s going to be ok, Astrid.” Hiccup scoots closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, his bare side pressed against her through a thin layer of blankets and she thinks about last night, about what a fucking idiot she was. 

“Get. Off. Of. Me.” 

“Astrid—”

“Don’t touch me,” she jumps out of bed, taking the blankets with her, tripping over her discarded wedding dress. “I—I don’t have to tell you where I’m going! I don’t.” There’s a trunk in the corner, her clothes moved in from her old house, and she digs out the first dress that she finds, whipping it over her head. Hiccup is out of bed, wearing yesterday’s pants, reaching towards her. The sunlight catches his torso, a white scar slashed across his chest that should have been fatal, that should have been a killing blow. She hasn’t heard the story behind it. 

“You don’t have to tell me where you’re going,” his hand glances her wrist and she jerks away. “But I am curious.” 

She shakes her head and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Her boots must be in the bedroom, so she stomps outside barefoot, grabbing her axe along the way.


	4. What do I call you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aurelia POV. Takes place after ~Chapter 15.

“I don’t know you very well.” 

Aurelia looks up from her book to see Astrid sliding into the chair across from her, leaning forward on her elbows. There’s something haggard in her face that reminds Aurelia of her father, a sort of drained pallor from living for years without something crucial. Aurelia looks back at her book and considers just reading.

Astrid would get the picture eventually and leave her to her silence. 

For some reason, that sounds like the worst thing in the world. 

She folds the corner of the page like her dad hates and closes the book, crossing her arms and leaning on it. 

“I don’t know you very well either.” 

Astrid’s lip quirks, and Aurelia sees how she was once very pretty. The kind of pretty that doesn’t need to acknowledge itself. The kind of pretty that requires full adult height. “I’m Astrid, I have a Nadder named Stormfly and my four kids just turned into six.” 

“That’s the stuff that everyone knows,” Aurelia tosses her hair, playing that oh so familiar role of pampered princess that she refuses to believe is really real. It’s just easier to coax people into holding doors for her rather than sitting back and laughing as she struggles with it herself. “I’m Aurelia Haddock, I don’t have a dragon, and you can typically find me wherever my dad is yelling.” 

Astrid narrows her eyes and Aurelia remembers the stories that her dad used to tell her about a blue eyed shieldmaiden who didn’t take no for an answer. No wonder her mom left. “Two of my kids won’t talk to me. I didn’t want to marry the chief, but it’s what’s best for the tribe.” 

“For Eret to be the future chief?” Aurelia curls her lip, but she’s impressed. She tries to remember the last time that someone was honest with her, the last time that someone told her the important thing rather than patting her on the top of the head and telling her not to worry about it. 

“Did you want the job?”

And that’s the first time anyone’s asked her that either. She searches Astrid’s face for the joke, for the smirk, for the glance at the tiny, rusty dagger attached to her belt. 

“You’re actually asking me that.” 

“Of course I am,” Astrid sits up and tugs on the end of her braid, still golden blonde in the light through the window. “Another thing about me. I say what I mean and I mean what I say.” 

“I don’t want to be chief.” Aurelia’s voice quivers as she says it, hushed like a secret, and Astrid smiles sympathetically in a magical way that doesn’t make her feel two inches tall. “It’s not me, I—I’m afraid of dragons.” 

It sounds so wrong when she says it out loud. 

“I used to be afraid of dragons too, in dragon training,” a shiver wracks the older woman’s spine and Aurelia tries and fails to imagine the great shieldmaiden from her father’s stories fifteen and scared. “They were so huge and unpredictable and they breathed fire and tried to kill me, what’s not to be afraid of?” 

“And you’re not just saying that.”

“Look,” Astrid rubs her hand over her face, the shiny silver band standing out against her skin. “I know I’m not your mom. I’m never going to be your mom, but…well, I can do almost everything your mom would do, alright? If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. Clothes, food, someone to teach you to use that dagger of yours.”

“What…what should I call you?” Aurelia tries not to let her guard down, tries not to feel sympathy for this other woman stuck with her dad the same way she is. Her lip quivers. She tests the word ‘Mom’ on her tongue and searches for the last time she said it out loud. 

“Anything but Mrs. Haddock.”

“I heard…I heard Stoick calling you Mommy the other day.” 

Astrid smiles to herself, “yeah, he has no qualms with adopting me as his mommy. I don’t mind it either. There’s something about little boys before they get too cool to hug you in public.” 

“I guess…I mean, it would be confusing for him if I didn’t call you _Mom_ too.” 

Astrid nods like she’s mulling the idea over, “it probably would. So Mom it is.” 

“Mom it is.” 


	5. Arvid and Astrid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arvid POV. Takes place after Chapter ~15

Arvid wakes up in an empty house, in an empty room, staring at his brother’s empty bed. He checks for Wing in the empty barn, listens for her fishing below and hears nothing but the crash of waves on the rocks. If he faces away from the village, away from the house, he can imagine himself entirely alone. The only person on this island. 

The only person left in Midgard. 

The loneliness aches in his chest and he coughs like it might help, turning back towards town and tucking his hands in his pockets. He thinks about calling Wing, about taking off. Not into the wilderness like Eret always used to talk about. To some other town, some other group of Vikings. Maybe one without dragons, he could take being the big hero for a while. 

He wanders into town, around the fringes, counting windows that he’s snuck through and windows he never will as women shut them with a glare. It’s funny, he always knew that the village barely tolerated his father, that it was some strange bonded respect for his mom that made them friendly, if curt. Gerd Johanesson crosses the street when he passes by, eyes averted, and his hands clench into tight fists at his sides. 

He remembers her in the moonlight, on that rocky outcropping outside of town, kissing him with clumsy lips and laughing when he smiled and he turns to her reflexively, pasting his best smile on his face. 

“Hey Gerd.”

She stops and glances at him over her shoulder, just for a second, just long enough for him to see the pink birthmark on the side of her nose, the one he thought was _cute_ even though he didn’t know why. She turns away from him and keeps walking. 

He cuts into the next alley, dragging his fingers down the rough hewn siding of houses on either side of him. Someone inside one of them laughs and he remembers boosting Eret onto the roofs to peek through the thatch. He’s shocked Eret’s still alive, that he hasn’t eavesdropped on the wrong thing by now without his brother to yank him down and tell him when to run. 

Eret never knew when to run. 

He reaches up towards the eaves of the laughing house, wrapping his fingers around the edge of the roof and contemplating pulling himself up. Could the thatch hold him? Does he care? It’s a ten foot fall. He imagines himself falling through onto some family’s table in the middle of breakfast, for once the landmark in the story instead of the jackass driving the getaway dragon. 

He and Eret found a nest of broken dragon eggs in the forest once. Sort of a motley crew of them, they later found out they’d all been dumped there by their mothers, that they smelled wrong and wouldn’t live. But two had made it out of their shells, an unusually skinny little gronckle and a squirming, dying baby whispering death. Guess which one Eret tucked under his arm and brought back to the village? 

When a baby gronckle falls through the roof, you laugh. You feed it. You give it a hug and pass it off for a healthy dose of the idiot chief’s best coddling. 

Arvid isn’t a gronckle. 

He does a pull up on the side of the house, the wood creaking as he touches his chin to it. He winces, his tattoos suddenly hot and unforgettable on his skin. In his skin. They say he’s a man, but a man would be healed by now. Men stitch their own wounds instead of letting them sit open and festering. He wonders if the healer has anything that would help and discounts the idea, because he doesn’t want the chief’s medicine that he brought back from some ridiculous adventure that he’s told everyone about far too many times. 

Infection kills, and he knows it, and it’s funnier than it should be, the physical act of becoming a man killing him. 

He continues down the alleyway, peeking at the main square through the gap, feeling uncomfortably invisible when no one makes eye contact. He used to be the diversion, lifting something or fighting someone while Eret darted around in the shadows behind him. 

His mother walks into his field of vision in a new green dress and her old fur boots and he exhales so loudly he swears she hears him. She was always lying about the eyes in the back of her head, she had to be, but she whips around now, making eye contact with him and holding it, Ingrid’s face with his eyes and the chief’s shiny band around her finger. He grimaces and stumbles backwards, turning around and scuttling down the alley, tripping over nothing like Eret, and now he’s the runt of the family, isn’t he? The family that doesn’t actually exist. 

“Arvid,” his mother is following him, of course, her footsteps always lighter than his, her hand clasping on his shoulder. He shrugs it off. “Arvid, I—”

“So you’ll talk to me in an alleyway, then?” He turns on her, his hands balled up into fists he’d never use and he sees the contents of her basket first. A dragon toy, a new one, carefully stitched from the same fabric as her new green dress. “For Stoick?” 

“Arvid,” she rests her hand on his arm and he lets it sit a moment longer than before, remembers her hand on him when he was seven and Eret fell out of a tree and broke his arm. Arvid was more upset about it than Eret, saying he should have caught him, he should have told him not to climb that high and Mom hugged him too tight while Dad carried Eret to the healer. “Your chin is infected.” 

“I’m a grown man.” 

“Yeah,” she smiles, a sad little smile that doesn’t really fit on her face. “And your tattoos,” her voice breaks across the word and she almost falls apart, “are infected.” 

“Why do you care?” 

“I’m your mother.” 

He steps away from her, and she frowns at him, and it makes her look older. His chin throbs. His eyes itch. 

“You…” she picks up the dragon toy and mulls it over in her hand, like it’s a dagger or a new hatchet. “You used to have one just like this. Well, it was missing a few stitches and dirtier, but you slept with it until you were seven or eight—”

“You’re not my mother.” 

“You don’t have to ostracize yourself, Arvid. You’re invited any time—”

“I’m not interested in your invitation.” 

“I think you’re still growing.” She’s too quiet, making him lean in to hear her. “I think you’re bigger than your father now.” 

“Don’t talk about him.” 

“I love you,” she sighs, holding the dragon toy out towards him and he looks at her like she’s crazy. “Take it. You…you can give it to Stoick when you pull your head out of your ass and come over.” 

He takes it and holds it for a moment, soft and floppy in his hand. He throws it behind him, hears it splash in a shallow puddle. His mother’s face falls and it hurts, and he used to beat anyone who made his mom look like that. 

“That will _never_ happen.” 

He stalks off down the alley and she doesn’t follow, and she’s gone when he stops next to that soggy little toy, nudging it with his toe as if to check if it’s alive. He picks it up and tucks it in his pocket, trudging towards home. Maybe Wing’s back. Maybe Dad’s back. Maybe everything is back to normal.


	6. Medicine Delivery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aurelia POV. Takes place after Chapter 15.

Aurelia rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, adjusting the strap of her bag across her shoulder. She’s not sure why she has to run this errand, but Astrid— _Mom_ —asked her to and she wasn’t going to say no. It’s nice to be trusted with something. It’s nice to go somewhere other than the academy with Stoick or Old Phlegma’s house with Stoick. 

She wonders what will happen when Stoick gets his own dragon and doesn’t need his sister to ferry him around anymore. She’ll probably be restricted—no, not restricted, how would her dad say it? Strongly encouraged. That’s it. She’d be strongly encouraged to stay in the house at most times. All times. 

Whenever it’s raining or snowing or there are dragons outside that she’s not intending to wrangle with her bare hands. 

She knocks on the door again when no one answers. Maybe Arvid isn’t even here. Her stomach flutters and sinks at the prospect as she swallows back a bizarre mix of compliments and insults. She would have killed for this opportunity at thirteen, when her dad was pressuring her to befriend Eret and she was stuck dwelling on the fact that Arvid had never even _looked_ at her. 

And she’s not stupid, she knows she’s pretty, she owns many mirrors and sees her beautiful mother in every delicate angle of her face. She’s prettier than other girls Arvid has…charmed. She went so many years thinking something invisible was wrong with her because she couldn’t get his attention, but it’s not as satisfying as it should be to know that he’s just an asshole. He can’t really be an asshole. Or if he is, Loki has a real sense of humor dropping a worthless jerk into that body.

That body opens the door, topped with an asshole glare and she steps back, tripping over nothing and scuffling back to her feet. 

“What do you want?” 

“Your Mom sent me over with some medicine for your—holy shit, your tattoos are super infected,” she steps forward in spite of herself, a hand reaching subconsciously towards him. He looks more human than even a couple days ago when she surprised him, with the disgusting ooze dripping down Baldr’s body and she realizes for the first time that his ears are a little too big, that they stick out a little too far. Cute. Cute ears on that body with that miserable expression? What did she do to tick Loki off this much? 

He covers his chin with a big hand and glares at her, blue eyes cold as ice. 

“I don’t want her medicine.” 

“Right, so you’ll just die from blood poisoning in the name of fashion.” 

She doesn’t like thinking about him dying and looks away, rummaging through her bag for the little clay jar. 

“I’m not going to die.” 

“Of course not, you’re invincible. Biceps don’t die.” She bites her tongue on purpose, unsure of what she’s saying or why she’s saying it. He looks anything but amused, staring at her the way that Eret stares at himself in the mirror. “Hey, think about it this way, if you use this stuff and still die, you get to guilt your Mom twice. Once because you got face tattoos and once because her medicine didn’t save you.” 

“I thought you liked her.” 

“I do,” she rolls her eyes and puffs her bangs away from her forehead. “I’m just trying to get you to take this stuff.” 

“Why do you care?” 

“Because…” because of that dreamy jawline, smart guy. Because someone needs to be the village idiot. Because she heard it stings and she’d’d like to see him put it on. Because she doesn’t want to watch him die from some stupid—but undeniably, illogically attractive—tattoos. “Because Mom gave me an errand and I’m going to do it, any means necessary.” 

“What? Are you going to tackle me?” It should be a flirt, logically, and he looks a little stunned himself that it isn’t, eyebrows inching up his winter pale forehead. 

“I’m not stupid.” She clears her throat, “if you’d been paying attention you’d already know that I’m going to manipulate you into taking it from me with a smile on that handsome face of yours.” 

“You think I’m handsome?” 

“Not with your chin swollen to the size of those immortal biceps.” 

He holds his hand out for the jar at that and she hands it to him, her breath hitching when his thumb glances against the side of her hand, warmer than it should be. “That’s vain of you.” 

“What?” He’s examining the jar, squinting at the runes roughly painted on the side and opening it to sniff what’s inside. 

“You’ll take the medicine so that I’ll think you’re handsome.” 

“I am handsome.” He laughs, a rich buttery laugh she could spread on toast. 

“You have a very high opinion of yourself.” She smiles, “especially for someone willing to die to look better.” 

“The tattoos mean I’m a man,” he puffs up, truly irritated now, and it’s even funnier that he suggested she’d tackle him because she’d have better luck dashing between his legs. 

She remembers Astrid offering her boxes of Ingrid’s old clothes, the way that leggings from the other girl’s childhood dragged on the ground, and she crosses her arms, trying to equip her barblike tongue. 

But something in his expression stops her, something vulnerable. Like child’s wooden toy weapon, pretending to be more dangerous than it is. A blustering Terror that bites her finger even though her dad swore it wouldn’t hurt a fly. She adjusts the strap of her bag. 

“Do you need any help?” 

“What?” 

She steps past him, slithering through the barely there gap he leaves in the doorway and looking around his house. Dusty. Empty. _Quiet_. There’s a little stuffed dragon on the comfortable looking leather chair in the corner and it makes her smile in spite of herself. 

“Unless Mr. Dragon is going to help you wipe away the pus, I was thinking you could use an extra pair of hands,” she turns back to him and her smile falters, “you know, ones that aren’t claws.” 

“It’s not my toy.” 

“I didn’t say it was.” 

“I’m just…I’m keeping it for somebody.” 

“And you’re giving him the comfortable chair,” she laughs, because it’s awkward and she’s standing inside of Arvid Hofferson’s house with Arvid Hofferson and no one invited her in her. Words rush out like dragon flames, and if dragons always feel like this she wonders why people let them inside. “Remind me to be your houseguest sometime.” 

“Well,” he seems stunned, and this is a disaster and she should leave now before she sprouts scales and burns the whole house down. He’s an asshole. She thinks of him and Eret, his huge fists in Eret’s face. She did what she was asked, she delivered the medicine. 

Arvid’s face falls like a little boy’s. “Well, there are plenty of empty beds.” 

“Do you have a towel?” She steps towards the hearth, picking up a pot of water and hanging it above the coals with a grunt. Cast Iron, heavy. Everything in her house is thin, expensive steel, and she misses _things_ for the first time in her life. 

He walks away without answering her and she can’t help but look at the open door, wondering if that’s how rude assholes tell you to get lost. She sighs, stomach quaking. She shouldn’t be upset about the asshole rejecting her, but the inner twelve year old who watched him from the bench outside the academy while she was waiting for Stoick to be done with his lessons sobs. 

He walks back in with a towel and hands it to her, sitting down next to Mr. Dragon in the good chair. 

“Are you always this talkative?” She rubs her hand over the towel for a moment, a soft little rag, torn from a threadbare shirt. She sets her bag on the hearth and dips the corner of the rag into the warming water over the fire, ringing it out into the coals with a sizzle. 

“I’m used to the quiet.” 

“I think I’d like some quiet,” she thinks of Eret, talking her ear off until far too late at night. Stoick, the pitter patter of his little feet and the clunking of his toys. Her dad talking to himself, Astrid in the kitchen. The quiet around her rings in her ears and if she listens hard enough, she can hear her own thoughts before they’re pouring out of her mouth. 

“You can be used to something that you don’t like.” He scowls at nothing and crosses his arms, and even if he’s an asshole, he’s sort of a brilliant one. 

“That’s a good way to put it.” She steps towards him and holds up the rag, “this…this will hurt.” 

He shrugs and tilts his chin towards her, still and looming as she steps up to him, her knees tingling when the brush against his. He doesn’t move when she presses the rag against his chin, feeling the heat through the cloth and wiping away the sickly looking yellow crust. The ink is still blue and defined underneath, neatly done. She focuses on the edge of the lines, pressing the cloth against his skin and wiping gently. 

Her free hand finds something to lean on. His knee, she realizes too late, flinching back and wiping her hand on her skirt. 

“It’s fine,” he mutters, shifting and letting his eyes fall shut. “It doesn’t hurt.” 

“Of course, the tough guy routine.” 

“It’s…you’re gentler than…most people.” He shifts and she knows he’s talking about his mom, knows that casual sting of remembering what she shouldn’t remember. “Where’d you get your healer training?” 

“Someone had to patch up all of Stoick’s skinned knees.” She smiles in spite of herself, leaning her fingertips again on his knee and pressing a clean corner of the cloth to his face. “He’s squirmier than you are.” 

“Your dad doesn’t do it?” 

“He does when he’s home,” she shrugs, and her chest pangs like it always does when she thinks about how it looks, she and Stoick in the corner of the great hall, picking at their plates while Dad works late. “He’s busy.” 

“Everyone’s busy.” 

“I’m not.” She drops the rag on the floor beside his feet, pausing with her fingers on his knee, suddenly struck by the difference in the size of their shoes. She feels like a kid. She stands and wipes her hand on her skirt again, like that’ll cool it down. “Now this might sting.” 

She reaches for the medicine and opens the lid, dabbing her finger into the herbal goop inside. He flinches when she wipes it across his chin, his fingers twitching on the arms of the chair. 

“Just a little bit more.” 

“It doesn’t hurt.” 

“Ok, tough guy.” 

“You don’t have to be insulting.” He glares at her, and he’s too close, she’s been creeping closer, close enough that her breath moves a strand of hair across his forehead. She pulls back. 

“I know what it feels like, you know, to have your Mom leave for something she thought was better.” She sets the jar down and shoves her hand in her pocket, scooping up her bag on the way to the door, suddenly eager to leave. “At least yours didn’t go so gods damned far.” 


	7. Astrid and Aurelia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aurelia POV. Takes place Chapter ~16.

“I used to hate you,” Aurelia tells Astrid one winter night, sitting across from each other, Astrid teaching her how to mend one of Stoick’s favorite shirts. “I used to hate you so much.” 

Astrid is quiet, her lips twitching like she’s thinking about saying something but she doesn’t. 

“My dad…he thinks he’s smart and sneaky, but he always looked at you.” Aurelia frowns at the phrasing, it’s stupid. It’s all so stupid. It’s stupid that she used to be mad and even dumber that she’s not mad anymore. 

Anger is like a bonfire, and even she, with her dad and her abandoning mom and her dead grandma, had to run out of wood eventually. She chews on the inside of her cheek and looks at Astrid through her eyelashes. Her Mom, functionally. Astrid has been more of a mom to her in the past few months than her own mother ever was.

“My mom hated you. She used to tell me about it,” Aurelia fumbles for words in a language she’s long forgotten, remembering the cadence of her mother’s voice in her mother’s maiden tongue without gleaning any meaning from the sounds. “She knew, at some level. She…I’m not stupid, you know. Sometimes…sometimes I act like it because it’s easier, but I’m not. My mother left when she figured out about Eret. It all lines up with that forge fire and—gods, after she left I hated you so much. It was easy if it was all your fault, because I didn’t know you, and it’s easier to hate someone you don’t know.” 

Aurelia turns back to her mending, focusing on it with her whole brain in a way she rarely does. Side to side, don’t prick fingers. She’s been botching this same thing for years, she remembers being ten and rigging some device with her boot to thread a needle because her hands were shaking and she was crying. 

“Do you like your dad?” Astrid asks in a quiet voice that doesn’t sound like her at all. Aurelia shrugs. 

“Honestly, he’s sort of pathetic at this point. He’s supposed to be some great chief, but he’s kissing your boots. He only talks to Stoick when he’s being cute.” 

“I used to like your dad so much. Just like…I was always wondering what he’d say about something, what he’d think. How it’d make me smile. I just liked him. Even when it hurt. Even when he didn’t notice.” 

“You two sound sort of messed up,” Aurelia curls her lip. “I’ve heard his side. Where you were the beautiful girl who never noticed him.” 

Astrid snorts, and Aurelia likes her more for the sound. The complete freedom of it, the way Astrid tosses her head back, hair flipping, she doesn’t look fifty, she looks like someone Aurelia would befriend. Someone she’d approach in the hall.

“That is the story he’d tell, isn’t it?” Astrid shakes her head, tying off a knot with expertly quick hands Aurelia will never have. “I guess it was like that. At first.” 

“You guys had a whole history.” It’s not a question. Aurelia isn’t stupid. She could put it together. 

“Yeah. Careful, you don’t want to mend too close to the edge of the fabric, it’ll tear through.” 

“That’s not a metaphor, is it?” Aurelia curls her lip, this is a joke, she wants it all to be a joke. She’s not funny like Eret, not really, but she wants to laugh, wants to have a reason to. 

“You remind me of him, you know.” 

“Not as much as Eret,” Aurelia frowns, because she’s not as good at being someone she hates as everyone else. That’s the thing, isn’t it? All the world wants is for her to be like her dad, who she hates, but she’s not enough of that, she’s not enough of anything. 

“More than, actually,” Astrid looks up but Aurelia stays focused, because eye contact—real, actual eye contact that has nothing to do with her face or her family—hurts. “Everyone likes to talk about the part of your dad that was like Eret. But…he was more like you. I guess. He was all about advantages. He was smart and backdoor ambitious more than he was funny, but everyone else forgets that.” 

It feels like a compliment even though it shouldn’t, and Aurelia frowns, pricking herself with the needle and biting back a hiss. 

“Now you’re just trying to charm me.” 

Astrid raises an eyebrow, “that sounds like something your dad would say.” 

Aurelia wants it to be a compliment, but it sits in her chest like a rock, “thanks.”


	8. Aurelia the Stalker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aurelia POV. Takes place during Chapter 16.

When Aurelia dropped by the forge to see Eret, she was really looking for an excuse to dig her sanity out of the deep, dark hole it disappeared into. He was no help at all, and she finds herself walking slowly, surely, inevitably towards the Hofferson house. When she was little, her dad was always trying to get her to make friends with Eret and she could never figure out why. It made her avoid his house like the plague because, well, defiance, and the path is still new to her. She’s walked every other path around the village a million times while she was waiting for Stoick to be done at the academy, and it’s nice to see different trees, different rocks, no dragon tracks in the dirt. 

The Hofferson house is way at the edge of the island, the literal end of the line and the sea breeze is licking at her bangs by the time she sees it. It’s funny, here by herself in the middle of the day, it just looks like a house. A pretty big house, squat and strange, made of what looks like a few different buildings stuck together, additions throughout the years. The barn door is open and a Monstrous Nightmare is asleep in the doorway, horned head in the sun. 

Aurelia steps back from the dragon, back into the fringe of the woods and skirting around the house to the back. She’s not sure why she’s here, not really. Maybe it’s because Eret made it seem like this impossible, magical place when she was with him and it just ended up feeling sad. Sad and empty. Like her own house, like something used to live in the rooms that died a long time ago. 

From the back it’s shabbier, the paint chipping, the siding salt-stained and old, and it almost reminds her of the derelict cabins she found out towards Raven’s Point a couple of years ago and spent a week exploring. The window in front of her creaks and she dodges back behind a wide tree, narrowing her eyes at the old shutters. It’s either Eret’s false Dad or Arvid. She thinks about her chances for a moment before creeping forward, hopping over a dead branch and leaning against the side of the house. She presses her ear to the wood and hears a man’s voice swearing inside. It doesn’t clear anything up, and she almost turns and leaves. 

She has more self-respect than this. Arvid is a dick. He’s a dick to Eret, he’d be a dick to her if she gave him a chance. Because of course, that’s the big hold up to their non-existent impossible relationship. She doesn’t have room in her heart for both of his biceps _and_ his thighs. She’d have to choose and she’s not a pick or choose kind of girl. She snorts at herself and claps her hand over her mouth, pressing her ear tighter to the house to see if anyone heard her. 

It’s quiet and she creeps towards the window, her heart pounding in her chest as she reaches out and touches the corner of the shutter. Other kids don’t get it, the subversive thrill of doing something wrong on the ground, without a dragon to whisk her away to anonymity. The shutter is rough, weather worn and salty and she pries it back a careful inch. 

It _squawks_ like she stepped on a Terror’s tail and she jumps back, crouching down under the windowsill and praying to Loki that she’s small enough it might hide her. 

“Eret,” Arvid shoves open the shutters and leans out, glaring up at the empty sky. “I know it’s you. If you’re going to snoop around, at least land and do it like a man.”

Arvid is shirtless, and Aurelia hates herself for noticing. Why are the hot ones always assholes? Why are the scaldingly, impossibly, ripplingly hot ones mean to her new brother? And looking up at it is a new angle, different from the occasional glimpses she’s seen from the edge of the watering hole she wasn’t invited to in the summer. She thinks of what’s on the other side of the wall and blushes, falling forward from her squat onto her knees. He looks down and she scrambles backwards, standing up and brushing herself off. 

“What are you doing here, Princess?” 

“You know, I remember before that title was an insult.” She crosses her arms, tries to play her flushed face off as anger. “It used to be ‘here comes the Princess, watch your language, she’s a lady’—”

“I’d threaten to call the chief, but I don’t think he’d do much.” Arvid curls his lip at her, crossing his arms across that chest and oh gods, she’s not really as furious as she’s supposed to be. “Did Eret put you up to this?” 

“Right, he’s the future chief, that of course means I’m not his friend and he just orders me around all the time. You’ve really got it all dialed in, don’t you?” She rolls her eyes. “For the record, I was exploring.” 

“Nothing to _discover_ here,” Arvid grabs the edge of the shutters, “go home, Princess.” He shuts the window. 

“You don’t tell me what to do either,” she grumbles, suddenly very alone, standing in front of the weathered wall in the silence. She can hear him moving around inside and wonders if she could reignite the argument by knocking on the front door. She wonders if he’d put his shirt on. 

She stands there for a long time before turning and dragging her feet back towards the village. 


	9. Hiccstrid Fighting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid POV. Takes place between Chapter 17 and Chapter 18.

Astrid knows a fight is coming as soon as she sees Hiccup, hunched over the table, every muscle completely rigid. It’s like he’s grown into the chair, like he’s focusing on being still so much that he’s turned to stone. She sets her axe down and crosses her arms, readying herself for it. 

“He doesn’t know _anything_.” Hiccup groans as soon as she shuts the door, turning to look at her with furious, red-rimmed eyes. “You never told him _anything_.” 

Astrid’s heart drops into her stomach. 

Logically, she knew this would happen eventually. As soon as Eret learned who his real father was, the rest would come out, but…but she thought she’d have a say in how it happened. She doesn’t know why she thought that, because she never has a say in anything anymore, but she hoped it wouldn’t happen like this. 

“You told him?” 

“Gobber told him.” Hiccup jumps to his feet, tugging at his hair and walking towards her. “He came in here furious and—and how could you? How could you go that far to make him hate me?” 

“I don’t have to try to make him hate you, you do that for yourself.” 

“You let him think I _forced_ you or some—Is there anything you told him the truth about? Did you tell him that the sky is green?” 

Astrid can’t remember the last time she saw Hiccup this angry. It’s evident in everything about him, vibrating off of him in waves and leeching into her. He doesn’t get to do this; he doesn’t get to attack her parenting like he would have done better. He doesn’t know anything, he doesn’t know what it’s like to stare into Eret’s face every morning and think of Hiccup. She couldn’t forget him, couldn’t ignore him, she was faced with _preventing_ him, with looking at his raw potential and charm and keeping it from disaster. He doesn’t get to judge how she handled the un-handle-able. 

“So you’re just going to be Chief Hiccup, the great truth teller, and rip his entire world apart?” She scoffs, “that’s what you think you’re doing, isn’t it? That you’re dragging him out of some pathetic, primitive existence and showing him the big, wide world.” 

He blinks, narrows his eyes, and steps towards her, “you let my son think I was a stranger.” 

“You are a stranger, I haven’t been close to you for thirty years. You were never around—”

“Because you wouldn’t let me be around.” He’s red in the face, eyes wet, fists clenched at his sides and she can’t remember the last time he fought back like this instead of just running away. 

Some long buried part of her is glad he’s not running, that he’s going to stand here and fight about it.

“There was no reason he ever would have needed to know about us—our past. It was never relevant. Why would I tell my son about some relationship I had when I was a _child_.”

He laughs, the sound bitter and unfamiliar. Back when she knew him, he wasn’t capable of a sound like that, so exhausted and harsh and humorless. 

“It’s funny that you tried so hard to hide something you pretend you don’t give a shit about.” He shrugs, “if you didn’t care about me at all, why would it matter that you used to?” 

“So that’s what you’re worried about? It’s not really about your _son_ like you always make it out to be. It’s about you being so in love with yourself that you can’t imagine I don’t feel the same.” 

“Personal attacks, wow, great tactic.” He snorts and she sees a glimmer of a younger, funnier man that she used to know. Sometimes living here is surreal, it’s an adolescent dream come true but framed as a nightmare. Waking up in the same room as him, having him be _around._

She sees him more now than she did the entire last year that they tried. 

“I don’t care about you. I think you’re _pathetic_. I’m doing what’s best for my son.” 

“Keep telling yourself that.” It’s a flat kind of anger, the kind that stirs up all of her instincts to _make_ him react. She wants to see his face split in an expression he didn’t pose on purpose, she wants to break him apart and glimpse at his core, because she was never good enough at reading him. 

“I don’t feel anything other than _nostalgia_.” 

He exhales and she realizes how close they’ve somehow gotten when his breath is cool on her chin. His expression fractures, splitting along the seams, something raw and desperate and human underneath it. He looks younger and she _feels_ younger, blood pulsing under her skin, insane thoughts racing through her head. 

She could kiss him. They’re married, she could. She has the _right_. 

She could punch him too. It’d be easy. Satisfying, the crack of her knuckles against his jaw. 

But she’s stuck on the last time she kissed him. Their wedding night, when everything almost felt right for a moment, like they could almost pretend. 

“Of course you don’t.” He rolls his eyes. 

They’re married. She’s not going to hit him, no matter how easy it would be. 

She leans forward and kisses him, flinging her arms around his neck and pulling him close to her. He makes some sound of startled surprise against her lips and _good_. She shocked him. She did something unpredictable. She wants to keep him shocked forever. Slack-jawed and _human_. 

“What are you doing?” He pulls back just enough to talk, hands landing on her waist, too warm and too soft for what this is. 

“Take off your pants.” She can use him and feel nothing. He used to feel nothing, she’s sure, when he came home late at night after a month away and threw pebbles at her window. 

He stares at her for a second, fingers curling in the fabric of her dress, before he’s kissing her, lips firm and urgent and mesmerizing because she could never say no to him, not really. One hand leaves her waist to fiddle with his belt buckle and she toes off her boots, shoving leggings down her thighs. 

It’s easier if they don’t think about it, isn’t it? It’s just physical. It’s a fight they don’t have to verbalize. 

This way she doesn’t have to look him in the eyes and admit all the reasons she lied. She doesn’t have to say out loud how badly he hurt her.

His hands are everywhere, in her hair, pushing his pants down over his ass, on her hips, shoving her backwards until the table is against the back of her thighs. He kisses her neck, reaching around her to sweep all the documents off of the table. They land on the ground with a whoosh, spreading across the floor and whooshing past her ankles. 

That’s kind of…hot. 

It’s like he wants this, needs this, like he’s not going to give her the short distance to the bedroom to change her mind. 

For the first time, she’s momentarily more important than the work he always brushed her off for, and it’s a sick, sweet rush of power as she sits back and wraps her legs around his hips. He groans against her throat, hips bucking against her and she did this. She made him fall apart. She made him pick a fight and shove his work on the floor and fuck her on the nearest surface. 

“Gods,” he reaches under her skirt, fingertips digging into the flesh of her thigh like he’s pinching her to make sure this is real and it’s too tender. 

“Hurry up.” She reaches between them and grabs him, gasping involuntarily because it’s so familiar and so different, so completely right that for a second this isn’t anger. She’s not using him. She’s living some stupid fantasy about what would have happened if Eret had known. 

“Fuck, _Astrid_.” He says her name like a prayer, like he’s saying it to himself in a darkened room, all alone, _hoping_. 

“Yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.” 

He pulls away far enough to look at her, eyes scanning across her face like he’s reading her. Like she’s one of those treaties he’s scanning for a lie. His hair is almost fully gray now but his eyebrows are still dark, reddish brown, framing eyes that are piercing straight through her. He could always read her. Always. 

It’s the first time he’s ever looked perplexed. 

She lines him up, digging her heels into his ass and pulling him close. He finishes the motion, sliding inside of her, hands braced against the table top behind her. She wraps her arms around his neck, holding herself up and rocking down into him. 

It feels better than it should. It feels like revenge, like retribution, like bone-deep satisfaction. Hiccup’s eyes flutter shut and he inhales, burying his face in her neck. He keeps forgetting. He keeps trying to make this more than it is. 

“Come on.” She almost says please, she almost begs, because she needs him to go, she needs him to lie to himself like she did for so long. 

She expects him to pull back, to try and force her into being soft. 

One of his hand moves to her hip, fingertips digging into the wool of her dress as he thrusts just hard enough, the motion echoing through her very core as he tugs her to the edge of the table and sets a bruising pace, like they’re still fighting, like this is his next, strategic move. 

She kisses him and he groans into her mouth, yanking at her dress to get it out of the way and leaning into her, the table creaking under her. His kisses are clumsy, preoccupied, _rough_ in a way he never is. He’s distracted and tactless, teeth dragging across her lower lip and making her moan.

Maybe it’s because it’s been a while or maybe because it’s because it’s _Hiccup_ , and she missed him more than she’d ever admit out loud, but the pleasure is already building to a head inside of her. It’s like if she gets there they might have a moment of clarity, a moment of connection that meant they didn’t have to finish their fight. That it could just disappear like the rest of them did. 

“Fuck.” He whispers, and it’s a lightning bolt straight to her core. His fingernails dig into her hip and he presses his face to her shoulder. His temple is sweaty against the side of her neck and she realizes how hot it is in here, how blistering. 

She has the feeling that he isn’t going to last, that he’s built up for this in a way she doesn’t understand. That he’s been looking at her, that he’s been as tortured by living with her as she has been living with him. She hates how that idea affects her. He’s been watching her with something other than pathetic desperation. He’s been thinking about this, about her. 

She’s not political to him. She’s not a means to an end. She’s his destruction, his distraction, she’s worth this. She deserves this. She deserves his full attention, the way he’s looking at her like he’s expecting something. Like her reaction determines his.

“Are you close?” His voice is rough, perturbed, so incredibly _affected_ by her that he almost answers his own question.

She’s embarrassingly close, all of this thrumming under her skin at some level she doesn’t understand and she nods, biting her lip and looking away. This is too close, this isn’t what it’s supposed to be, it isn’t rough and fast and necessary. 

It’s everything it used to be. It’s more. It’s sadder and deeper and the most alive she’s felt in years. 

She gets there all at once, overwhelmed and oddly gratified as Hiccup follows instantaneously, forehead smacking against her shoulder. His hips twitch abortively, and in her relieved haze she appreciates the easy rhythm he’s always had. His hair is soft under her hands and his chest is heaving against hers. 

“Get off,” she says, reflexively. 

She holds him close for a moment before shoving at his shoulders and squirming away from him. Her knees are unstable and she avoids eye contact, trying to ignore the satisfied throbbing in her core. She hears his belt. 

“I’m not done, Astrid. What…what you did was wrong. I—I just…” His voice is quiet and confused. Still furious. Still closed off in a way he never used to be. 

“You aren’t going to brag?” She tucks her clothes under her arm, feeling kicked out in her own house. This is supposed to be her house. It doesn’t feel like it, even now, it feels like she’s on trial, like she’s interviewing for some mythical position of Chief’s Wife. “That happened after you accused me of…of _feeling_ something for you and you aren’t going to brag about it?” She turns to face him, tries not to look at him, tries not to enjoy the way he’s rumpled and wide eyed and so attractive that her chest hurts. “You’re not going to make me hear it?” 

“I…I can’t do this.” He shakes his head and stalks out of the house, slamming the front door behind him. 

Right. That’s what he always does. There’s no reason he would have changed. 

She scoops up her clothes and stalks to the bedroom, trying not to cry. 


	10. Gobber and Hiccup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup POV. Takes place during Chapter 18.

As soon as Hiccup is outside, he’s sure he’s stuck in the middle of some messed up dream. It’s sunny, the light warm enough to cut through the wind and the village looks clean and organized below him. If this were real, it would be storming, the sky would reflect the utter tumult of his life. 

Toothless peeks out of the barn, like he’s afraid to leave, like he just heard all of that and can’t believe Hiccup survived. 

“Hey bud,” Hiccup walks over and pats his head, scratching under his chin. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” 

Toothless calls bullshit, rolling big green eyes and pressing his nose to Hiccup’s side in comfort. His nostrils flare and he looks at Hiccup suspiciously. 

“Great. Even my dragon is judging me. I don’t need that right now, bud, opinions to yourself.” 

Toothless warbles and falls into step beside Hiccup as he walks towards the village. He’s not sure where he’s going, if there’s anywhere he could go, but he knows if he climbs onto Toothless he’ll leave, so he stays on the ground. He doesn’t think leaving is right. He wonders if it was ever right or if it was just the only thing that seemed easy. 

He wonders what Eret’s dad is telling him. 

Nothing good, probably. Probably some long story about Hiccup the Philanderer who ruined the most stable thing in the world. 

He never thought of himself that way, he just felt _trapped_. It was like he was escaping shackles no one else could see or understand and he knows that’s not a good enough reason but…but it’s all he has. He hopes Eret gives him a chance to explain himself, even if his reasons aren’t satisfactory he wants his son to know them. 

He wants his son to know what he came from and he’s so far beyond furious with Astrid for lying to him. It’s like she tried to erase Hiccup entirely, like she picked and chose tiny blips of their entire relationship and left the rest behind. It’s like she chose tiny parts of him and assigned them to Eret while pretending that the rest of him didn’t exist. 

Hiccup finds himself at the forge without thinking about it and Gobber spots him through the front window, face hard and grey and worried. He leans on the counter and Toothless greets Grump, tail swishing happily across the path. 

“So. I heard you told Eret a little secret today.” 

“It jus’ slipped out.” Gobber shrugs, waving him inside. “You look like day old dragon dung, I’ll close up shop for a while.” 

“You really know how to compliment a guy.” Hiccup laughs because this is surreal, because he feels like a kid again, lining up for one of Gobber’s best lectures and pretending he’s not eager to be parented. He walks around the forge and steps inside. Toothless follows and curls up next to Grump by the fire, watching the coals with round green eyes. 

Gobber shuts the windows and sits down. He looks the same as he always has in the dim light, like closing the blinds erased thirty years and Hiccup is young and stupid all over again. 

“I didn’t mean te tell him.” Gobber starts, “Promised Astrid I wouldn’t.” 

“Why would you promise that?” 

“Because she asked,” he tugs at his moustache, looking pensive, “and she never asked for much.”

“Why…why did you always take her side, in all of this?” It’s true in a quiet way that Hiccup doesn’t understand. Gobber was _his_ when he was younger, his favorite uncle, his surrogate parent, the one person who never thought he was less just because he was different. But when everything came crumbling down, when Astrid signed a contract and married someone else, suddenly Gobber chose her.

“Do ye remember the day before she got married?” 

Hiccup doesn’t. He doesn’t remember the week before or after. He just remembers running around like a chicken with his head cut off and a single, bruising moment of clarity when he realized she would never be _his_ again. 

“Theoretically.” 

“Ye came in here plannin’ yer big escape.” He takes the hammer off of his hand and starts twisting another prosthetic into place. A simple hook, like he’s given up on work for the afternoon. “Askin’ me to fix yer saddle, showin’ me a map and telling me how long you’d be gone, as soon as you ‘dealt with Astrid’s thing’. That’s how ye said it. An’ I told ye ‘ye’re going to regret this’ but ye didn’t listen, ye just kept pacing around, talkin’ about nothin’.” 

“I didn’t—I didn’t know what I was doing.” Hiccup admits, staring at his hands. “I thought she was happy. I thought she didn’t love me anymore.” 

“If ye’d looked at her fer a second, ye’d have known that wasn’t true.” 

Hiccup tries to remember what she looked like, then, that summer when she left his bed for the last time. It’s all fuzzy, blurred together with the Astrid at home right now and the Astrid he had memorized when he was a kid. The Astrid who had his back. 

He can remember her on her wedding day in precise, clear detail, the way her hair curled around her shoulders, the way her eyes met his with acceptance and contentment. The way his heart hurt when he looked at her, his mouth moving without direction as he tied her to someone else. 

“An’ then a decade later ye come back expectin’ te marry some girl none of us know and ye start talkin’ te Astrid like…like it never got through yer thick skull that she could ne’er say no to you and—”

“She said no to me all the time. She left me.”

“Not before ye left her a hundred times.” 

“That was different, I always came back.” He’s aware of how childish he sounds and he hates it. He hates feeling petulant and out of control and he hates that he deserves it. “I always knew I’d come back. She should have known too, I…”

“Ye never noticed the way the village looked at her, like she was a disease. And then she has yer child an’…an’ she asked me to help protect ‘im an’…I didn’t see any way his life would be better if I tol’ him the whole, messy truth.” 

“I could have been his father!” Hiccup lurches to his feet and Toothless perks up, ready to leave or defend him. “I could have known him. He—he’s like me, Gobber, and we could have stuck together.” 

“Yes, he’s like ye. He’s every bit the boar-headed Viking you are but he’s ‘is mother too. He’d never let you know if ye hurt ‘im.” 

“I’m not going to hurt him. I never meant to hurt Astrid or my wife or anyone, I was just…young. And stupid.” 

“Ye weren’t that young, not when Eret was born.” 

“I was talking about when I messed up the first time, I was grieving—”

“We all were.” Gobber’s voice silences Hiccup immediately. Entirely.

If there’s one person who loved his dad more than him, it’s Gobber. 

“I’m sorry.” It occurs to him that it’s the first time he’s said it. He never said it to Astrid, not really, he never said it to Gobber. He never asked how Gobber was doing, never looked outside of himself long enough to see that everyone else was broken too. 

“That’s a start.” Gobber smiles, “if ye said sorry a wee bit more and stopped your storming out nonsense, I’d say ye might have half a chance.” 

Hiccup frowns, sheepish.

“Ye stormed out and came here, didn’t ye? Thor’s beard, Hiccup, make a _new_ mistake, aren’t you bored with the same old ones?” 

He thinks of Astrid, furious and wounded and kissing him. Of how good it felt to do the exact wrong thing, just to have her in his arms for a moment. Of how much better than fighting it was, just like it always used to be. 

“Apparently not.” 

“I don’ think I want to know what that means.” Gobber stands up and wipes his face, “now when you find yer son, tell ‘im he’s not off the hook. He doesn’t get to leave work half-finished.” 

“You’re awfully strict with him,” Hiccup helps Gobber open the shop again. “Don’t you think he’s earned a day off with all the new trauma?”

“I think if I’d given ye a few less days off, we might not be havin’ this conversation.” Gobber cuffs him upside the head, an affectionate little slap that’s more embarrassing than painful. “Fix it, Hiccup. That boy doesn’t need any more of your Odin-damned drama.” 

“Sheesh,” Hiccup rubs his head, pretends like it hurt more than it did, “I come here looking for support…” He sighs, looks at his hands, “thanks, Gobber.” 

“Anytime, chief.” Gobber winks at him, hobbling to the corner to sort through the to-do pile. “Just next time, make sure it’s a new problem.” 


	11. A.r.v.e.l.i.a.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aurelia POV. Between Chapters 19 and 20.

The worst part about the apple tart is that it’s delicious.

Aurelia doesn’t want it, because she hasn’t eaten one in a decade, since that first morning her mother was gone and her dad went to get breakfast because he couldn’t do anything else right. And Stoick was crying and too small to be all alone. She just remembers holding her brother and staring at the front door, halfway sure that her dad was going to leave too until he came back with breakfast and started telling her that everything was going to be ok. 

And it wasn’t ok, of course, it was awful and scary and sad, and it seemed like he didn’t hear her that morning or any time after. And now apple tarts just taste like hopes destined to be crushed, and maybe it’s appropriate that she has one today. 

She’s going to help her stupid new big brother save dragons and she’s going to go see Arvid again, like that’s not a disastrously beautiful dead end. Maybe she’s once again, fully composed of hopes just waiting to be crushed.

“You ok?” Mom asks as she’s finishing up her breakfast, but honestly, she looks like she’s winning the discombobulated award, so Aurelia doesn’t take her up on the gentle offer of comfort. 

“He’s nice sometimes,” Aurelia shrugs, “I never take it too seriously, it normally means he’s about to do something ridiculous.” 

“Yeah,” her mom snorts, more of an exhale through her nose than anything else, “usually it means he already did.” 

“One time he left a baby dragon in my room. He was really nice when I got home, Phlegma made us dinner and it was decent and I thought it was a good night until I went upstairs and this gronckle was all over me.” She stands up and shakes her head. “Baby gronckles seem pretty big when you’re the shortest nine-year-old on the island.” 

Mom sets her hand on Aurelia’s, comforting and understanding, and that makes all of this worse, because she knows what Dad does and she’s here dealing with it too. Suddenly, Aurelia wants to tell her the truth, about the dragons, about the attacks on neighboring islands, about the bombings. She’d have something useful to say, Aurelia’s sure of it.

But she promised Eret and that means something too. 

Yeah, it means she’s putting a lot of faith in Eret and her dad thinks Eret’s just like him, and that could all come crumbling down on her apple tart filled self, but…she’s risking it. And she should leave before she rethinks all that. 

“I don’t know what he’s thinking with you.” Mom pats her hand, “or me, or Eret for that matter, but mostly I don’t know how he thinks it’s going to work out with you.” 

“I don’t think he does think about it,” Aurelia laughs, pats her Mom’s shoulder and sighs. “I’m going out. Well, not out, because it’s Berk and it’s morning and there’s nowhere to go, but I’m going to go walk around and clear my head.” She almost asks if her mom is ok, because she cares about that, and suddenly, in this moment, they seem like the two people that her dad has fucked over the most. But she doesn’t ask because she’s not ready for the answer. 

She’s not ready to be lied to, to hear ‘I’m ok’ in the exact tone she’s always said it. 

“Have fun,” Mom waves her off, “I have to say, it’s kind of nice knowing one of my kids will stay on island.” 

“Keeping track of me is easy, I will claim that one, I never go anywhere.” Aurelia waves one last time as she walks out of the front door and runs down the hill, because this feels like escaping and pursuing all at once. The Sigurdsons’ Nadder tries to _greet_ her, which no one ever seems to realize is only a couple runes from _eat_ her, and she ducks onto a smaller forest path. 

It’s not a great idea, given the morning she’s had, to take the long, quiet way around the island, because there’s too much time to think and too many things to think about, but apparently it’s the path with the least dragons so she takes it, skirting along the shore.

She doesn’t hate Berk. Not really, not conceptually. She’s always kind of wished to be somewhere else, but that’s because of the dragons and her family and the fact that she’s so fundamentally unacceptable here. But she likes the beaches, and she likes the steep cliffs, and even though she’s always cold, she likes the cold weather. She’s always kind of envied the way that the cold drives everyone else together, even if she’s always been left on the outside. 

It’s like she gets this place, in every way except for the dragon obsession, and that’s inexcusable.

The sun is high in the sky by the time she makes it to the Hofferson place, climbing up the horribly maintained side-path to their house. The sea-facing side of the house looks even worse, all raw wood and salt stained paint and she rests her hand on it. 

“Thor’s beard,” she swears under her breath when a splinter bites into the palm of her hand, jerking away from the house and sucking on the wound until the splinter comes out onto her tongue. She flicks it onto the ground and steps on it for good measure, looking up at the window and wondering not so idly if Arvid is shirtless again. 

She wouldn’t _complain_ necessarily. Or at all. It would make her argument a lot less sound, especially since she hasn’t considered what she’s going to say yet, but she’d enjoy every verbal stumble to look at him. Plus, it’s not like it’s hard anyway, it’s just ‘dragons are blowing up Berserker shit, we’re going to talk about helping them later, show up’. 

That won’t take that long to finesse, really. 

Maybe he’d let her inside again, if she didn’t argue back too much, and she could see if he still has that ridiculous stuffed dragon that he used to. Maybe if the light level in the room were low enough he’d forget she wasn’t just another one of his conquests, and she’d have a decent way to spend the rest of the morning and afternoon until meeting with Fuse and Eret.

She thinks about knocking, because that might be normal, even though the first thing she’d announce is that she’s half a day early for an appointment he doesn’t know about, but she also doesn’t want to talk to him while her breath still smells like apple tart and she can’t think of anything but how easy it would be to hit her somewhere it hurts. Because everything hurts. The sun hurts, too bright behind a veil of clouds so pale grey they look white, and her ankles hurt, where they’re cold and chapped through the fraying of the fur in her boots. 

And her head hurts, because her dad doesn’t know what he does and even though she has a new mom and a new brother and a new, stupid quest dragging her everywhere, it still has the capacity to hurt her. 

She flops down on the porch, giving absolutely zero thought to being quiet because Arvid’s probably asleep or not here anyway, and it’s a small victory that she doesn’t get any splinters in her butt. Like, it wouldn’t have been all bad, maybe, because Arvid owes her one for nursing some dumb, superficial injury and that’d be a way to get her foot in the door. 

Or her butt in the door.

And her butt isn’t really her best foot to put forward but—The door opens behind her and she nearly falls off the porch, scrabbling for her hold and getting another splinter in her finger. 

Fuck. 

“Who’s out here?—Oh. It’s you.” Arvid glowers at her from the doorway, tattoos mostly healed, hair down around his shoulders, and _fuck_ him for looking hot right now. It’s first thing in the damn morning, can’t he be gross and sleepy eyed like everyone else?

No, of course not, sleepy eyes on him look like the sweet intersection of muscles and broody glares and her face feels hot. 

She sets her jaw, “again, _you_ has a name. I’m sure you could remember it if you tried _really_ hard.” 

“What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you later.”

“What?” He scratches his head and yawns and she bets he’s warm to the touch, that his blankets are still all tangled up from him lying in them.

“This afternoon. Don’t worry about it yet.” 

“Again, what?” 

“I need to talk to you this afternoon, that’s what I’m doing here,” she rolls her eyes like she’s judging his confusion and he runs his hand through his hair, squinting up at the sun like he’s trying to tell what time it is. “It’s still morning, yes, but I need to talk to you later.” 

“Whatever,” he steps back from the door, his face falling back into shadow, “’m not awake enough for this nonsense.” 

He shuts the door and she kicks herself, because she didn’t say anything that made sense and what kind of loser just…skulks around someone else’s porch all day? And now she has to sit here with the horrible truth of knowing what Arvid fucking Hofferson looks like first thing in the morning and if she leaves, it’ll look like he scared her off, which is obviously impossible. 

Something shifts in the barn, probably his dragon, and she draws her knees to her chest, chewing on her fingertip and trying to suck the splinter out. His house needs some paint or some repairs. He should invite her inside to inspect the rest of it. 

And you know, he should probably be far more shirtless and just as tired as he just was, because it softened all of his edges and brought his sheer hotness down to a comprehensible level she could wrap her mind around. 

The window in front of her, along the side of the house, opens and he leans out of it, still squinting against the sunlight as he glares at her. His shirt is too tight. It’s probably restricting his movement, poor dear, someone should help him out. 

“So you’re just going to sit there all day?” 

“Do you have a better idea?” She’s more serious than she’d like to admit, like if he proposed some genius plan other than sitting here, she might actually do it. 

“You could fuck off.”

“You’ve got a way with words, has anyone ever told you that?” She laughs, leaning back on her elbows and trying to get comfortable. The thing in the barn creaks again and she tries not to jump. 

“What’s got you so jumpy?”

“Nothing.” 

He stares at her, blinking twice like she’ll suddenly poof into some being that makes sense. She wishes it were that simple, she would have grown a foot and a death wish a decade ago if people’s confusion meant anything. 

She raises an eyebrow, half to challenge him and half to see what he’ll say, and he grunts, disappearing inside and shutting the window. 

He’s not making this very much fun, is he? It’s like he knows that arguing back won’t get him anywhere but even worse, he’s not willing to try, and it’s driving her crazy. He should at least try. And if he wanted to leave his hair down, that’s entirely up to him, but she’d consider it a solid life decision. 

It’s a nice day for fall, really, the breeze off the bay isn’t too cold and the sun isn’t too hot, and she could almost fall asleep if it weren’t for where she is and what she’s thinking about. She knows Arvid is a dick, a royal dick, a next level royal dick who’s mean to her and mean to Eret and sits around moping like he knows how handsome his stupid moping face is, but she can’t help being interested. And it’s more than him just being hot, it’s the fact that Arvid and Eret and Aurelia seem to be the trio of young people utterly unaffected by the awesome-nature of chief Hiccup Haddock. 

Arvid hates her dad. Arvid hates her dad so much that he hates her by extension, and in a weird way, it makes her feel like she’s being valued independently. It’s easier to be hated by association than loved by association, or something like that.

She readjusts her position, sitting up straight and looking at her hands. Her ring, the one she asked Eret to fix all those months ago, is still shiny and she spins it around her finger, wondering how many times she could twist it around before it’s time to tell Arvid. 

She could tell him now, she guesses, but that gives him time to think about not showing up, and it’s her one job to get him there. 

“Just tell me now,” he opens the front door again, and he’s horribly, attractively, miserably put together, his hair pulled back from his face, “whatever it is.” 

“I don’t need to tell you until this afternoon.” 

“How about instead of shocking me with whatever it is, you just tell me now?” 

“Why would I want to shock you?” Except she has, forever, because shocking him might make him notice her, and this is the hardest lie she’s deadpanned today, one eyebrow twitching slightly when the dragon in the barn thumps again behind her. “Because that’s an insult to my sense of humor.” 

“I’ve got things to do today,” he sounds irritated now, pushed beyond some imaginary barrier she hadn’t realized she was brushing up against, “so if you could just tell me now—”

“What kinds of things?” She asks, because her top three hobbies are crushing on unattainable assholes, asking questions that only end in pain, and being nosy. 

“None of your business.”

“Ooh, super-secret things you refuse to tell me about, how intriguing. Is this how you get all your dates?” She sneers, almost accidentally, years-worth of jealousy and embarrassment making her wish she hadn’t come here. “Tell me more.” 

“I have to fix my saddle,” he rolls his eyes, “not that I should have to run it by you, _princess_ but—“

“Eret would do that for you.” She wishes she were standing up, but it’s more casual this way, more like she doesn’t actually care what she’s saying. “If you weren’t such a gods-damned asshole to him. All the time.” 

“He’d do it anyway,” Arvid smirks, cruel in that way that makes him less and more hot all at once and she can feel her blood threatening to boil beneath her skin. 

“Yeah, he would,” she laughs, a sarcastic, too fake laugh that echoes off the walls. “Did you know that he won’t even talk bad about you? You break his face and say a million mean things and he makes some joke about how you were imagining my dad. Next time go straight for my dad, alright? Eret is too good to be your punching bag.” 

He freezes, shoulders a hard, rigid, impossibly straight line. 

“You think I should punch the chief?” 

“I think someone should, and you seem fully cocked and ready.” 

Innuendo. She tries and fails not to look him up and down, like she’s living in some dirty book Fishlegs refused to have in the library. 

“Punching the chief is a joke to you?” He looks stunned and she likes the look on him until she realizes what it means. 

He thinks because her family name happens to be Haddock, she’s obviously the chief’s number one fan. And normally, well normally it’s in her best interest for people to think that, it’s easiest and quickest and she doesn’t mind. 

But she cares that Arvid thinks it. 

“I’m only three months younger than Eret, you know. His last fuck up wasn’t even done cooking when he moved onto me.” 

““I’m barely a year older than Eret,” Arvid mumbles, because there’s something unidentifiably shameful in the fact, like—

“Turns out neither of our moms could keep him interested.” 

“Exactly,” Arvid jerks his head up, like she’s pulling it with a string, and it makes him . “But then Eret—”

“Hey, Eret is the best.”

“He’s got you fooled,” he rolls his eyes and takes a big step backwards into the house, the door falling shut behind him. It’s silent, for a moment, for long enough that she thinks she has peace until later, when she actually wanted to tell him, but then his head appears in the doorway again, all at once. “Do you want food? Or something?” 

“What?” 

“You’re just—I guess you’re a guest, or something,” he scoffs. 

“I already ate.” She tries not to look at him like he’s someone new, crossing her legs, “I bet Mom taught you that, all that polite stuff. I’ll have to tell her it stuck.” 

“You call her Mom.” He doesn’t sound hurt, he sounds blank, like I’ve heard coming out of my own mouth so many times, and Arvid Hofferson should not be so relatable while his arms are putting so much stress on the sleeves of his shirt. Those two realities shouldn’t be able to coexist. 

“I heard you don’t anymore.” She shrugs, “so why should you care what I call her?” 

“I don’t.” He scoffs, “I was angry when I said that.” 

“Original excuse there, like we all aren’t angry all the time.” 

“What do you want to talk to me about?” He frowns, tattoos wrinkling slightly, like they’ve always been a part of his face. She tries to remember what he looked like without them and it’s like remembering herself without Eret hanging around. 

“Eret is talking to Fuse later about blowing up the sick dragon island. We should both be there too.” 

“When?” 

“When he’s done with his chiefly stuff for the day, I don’t know, that’s why I wasn’t going to talk to you about it until this afternoon.” 

“Oh.” He shrugs and leans against the doorframe, simultaneously clueless and fully aware how it makes him look. Which is good. Very good, really good, good enough to make her regret volunteering for this whole dumb scheme. 

Not that she essentially came up with the whole grand scheme or anything. She’ll let Eret have that, from here on out, just to complain about how utterly unfair it is for Arvid to look so good. 

“Yeah, oh.” 

“So why are you here now?” He looks like he wants to smile but thinks better of it, because of course he’d never smile at her, of course that’s insane and a product of her awful morning causing hallucinations. 

“Because it’s quiet, but then your house gave me like three splinters so…” She stands up, all at once, because this feels like something other than the argument she came for and she hasn’t thought through where it’s going yet. “So show up later. The Thorston place.” 

“Yeah.” He narrows his eyes at her. 

He doesn’t tell her to stay away from his house this time and she tries not to read into it. 

She reads into it. 


	12. Hiccup Makes an Effort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup POV. After Chapter 20.

When Hiccup gets home, Astrid is sitting in the barn with Stormfly, head bent forward as she mends some item of clothing he doesn’t recognize. She looks so peaceful that he almost doesn’t bother her, but Stormfly notices him, raising her head and chirping in greeting. Astrid looks up, expression guarded, and he thinks that he hasn’t seen past the vaults in her eyes for seventeen years. He hardly remembers what she looks like with her guard down and it makes his chest ache. 

He just…he wants her to—he _wants_. He wants everything they don’t have anymore and everything they never had. 

“Uh, hey.” He waves, lingering outside, wondering if he could talk to her without starting another fight. Part of him wants to fight, wants to push her buttons until she’s kissing him and pressing him up against the barn door to—

But it won’t help anything. As good as it felt, as pathetically happy as he is that he now has that memory of her so close at hand, it won’t help anything. If he wants to fix this, he needs more than a bandage of physicality bridging the gap between them. 

He’s treated their fractured relationship like a broken bone and splinted it with a marriage, but really, someone cut the limb off entirely and he needs to build a new one. A stronger one. 

She nods in greeting, lips tightly pressed together. She looks like Eret when she does that, Eret trying so hard to hold back some cruel, witty comment. Hiccup never holds those things back and it’s strange to see his own whirring mind above Astrid’s honor bound reserve. 

He almost turns to go inside but he wants to talk to her. He doesn’t want to leave her sitting alone in the barn, he wants to find some bridge of commonality between them and cling to it. Maybe all they have anymore is Eret and their own miserable mistakes. 

“Can I help you with something?” She asks after a few minutes, looking at him like he’s distracting her, like he’s annoying.

“I think…I think Eret has a girlfriend.” He’s overestimating a little bit, yes, but the way Astrid’s eyes light up is worth it. Her entire face comes to life, eyebrows twitching, lips curling into a pensive little frown. 

“No he doesn’t, he’d tell me.” 

“I mean, I don’t know if I’d use the word _girlfriend_ because he wasn’t exactly suave about it but…I think he’s at least trying to flirt with someone.” 

She sets her mending aside, reaches out to scratch Stormfly’s neck, “who is it?” 

“Uh, Fuse Thorston.” 

“No way, not Fuse.” She shakes her head. “Anyone but Fuse. He can’t like Fuse, he hates her.” 

“His brother hates her.”

Astrid looks stunned that he knows and he shrugs. “It’s a small island and Arvid isn’t exactly quiet about it.” 

“He’s not quiet about anything,” she sighs, looks at her hands for a moment of silence that feels almost like mourning before sitting up and crossing her legs, “and Eret can’t like Fuse. She bombed our house.” 

“That was like, a decade ago. And you didn’t see him.” He takes a couple careful steps towards the barn, like if he approaches too fast she’ll run off like a skittish dragon. “He sniffed her hair.” 

“He sniffed Fuse Thorston’s hair?” Astrid _laughs_. A disbelieving laugh, a small breathy thing that hardly counts, but it’s not cruel and it’s not directed at him. “Like…how did that happen?” 

“I was asking her to do something for me and showing her a drawing and he walked up behind her and sniffed her hair. And then she said she was working on some big project and he got all…twitchy and said he’d go by her shop after work.” He steps close enough to pet Stormfly’s head and if he reached out he could touch Astrid’s shoulder, but they aren’t fighting, she’s not looking at him like he’s prey and she forgot her axe. 

“You’re making this up.” She glares at him like it’s a mean joke and he clears his throat. 

“No, let me do my Eret impression.” He stiffens his shoulders a little bit and looks at Stormfly. “Pretend your dragon is Fuse, ok?” He sniffs Stormfly’s neck, exaggerating until Astrid’s frown cracks around the edges, then takes a step back, “Yeah, no, definitely, I’ll uh come by your shop later.” He mimes almost touching his fist to blue scales then pauses, exaggeratedly patting her and letting his hand linger a little too long. 

“That’s creepy, don’t do that.” She crosses her arms but her anger isn’t real, it’s covering up something that almost looks like a real laugh. “He like…patted her?” 

“Yeah, it was the single most awkward thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And I do own a mirror.” 

“You don’t have to do that,” she frowns at him, “it won’t work. You can’t just…make fun of yourself until I laugh and pretend everything is ok.” 

“I’m not,” he sighs, “I’m really not, that’s not what I’m doing.” 

She rolls her eyes, “and my son doesn’t like Fuse Thorston, that’s ridiculous.” 

“I think he does.” Hiccup chooses not to take on the ‘my son’ comment, it’s not the time. This is a new record for not yelling at each other. “Watch them together sometime.” 

“In this mythical universe, does she like him too? Or is he just…you know,” Astrid winces at what she’s about to say, “doing that thing where he follows her around like a sad little terror?” 

Like he used to do to his _sister_. Like Hiccup tried so hard to stop. 

Odin’s pants, Gobber is right, Eret’s had enough drama in his life. Maybe he wants Eret to have a normal teenage crush just to feel like he’s less messed up by this shit than he probably is. 

But still. It was pretty obvious. 

“I mean, she invited him to ‘come by’ and stuff, and I’m not really ah, caught up on kids’ slang but she was sort of smiling at him.” He frowns. “Actually I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile when nothing was on fire before today.” 

“Great,” Astrid sighs, “that’s what I like to hear. More fire.”

He strokes Stormfly’s jaw, looking sideways at Astrid like she might catch him staring. She looks better rested and he feels the ache in his back from the shitty mattress upstairs. He missed her even though he’s not supposed to, even though it was wrong in the first place. He missed those few minutes before they were fully awake when she was breathing slow and quiet beside him and he could pretend at some level that it was normal.

“You didn’t come to bed last night,” she doesn’t look at him as she says it, just stares blankly out the barn door. “I thought you left.” 

“I wouldn’t do that.” His retort sounds feeble even to himself and he sighs, resting his forehead against Stormfly’s head. “I’m not going to do that.” 

“You’re still pissed.” It’s not a question. 

“I was thinking we’d finish that fight when you can look me in the eye.” He hates the way he sounds, right now, every syllable somehow flippant when he doesn’t want it to be. She glances at him, makes eye contact and instantly stiffens, everything about her on guard. 

He hates it. He hates himself for the part he played in making her act like this, in making her hard and cold and scared from the world shaking underneath her. 

Once upon a time, he taught her to relax, and somehow, without even noticing, he took all of that away and more. 

“You’re really letting me off the hook there.” She sets her jaw and stares him down and they both know it doesn’t count. 

It’s a challenge, just as much of a fight as sex was the day before. He looks away first, scratching Stormfly’s chin and walking towards the barn doors. 

He doesn’t want to fight with her, doesn’t want to try and win. If he wins, she loses and if she loses, he doesn’t really win. 

“Seriously though, watch Eret with Fuse, tell me if I’m lying.” He calls back over his shoulder, palms sweating like he’s about to jump off a cliff without his flight suit as he walks into the house and shuts the door.

She stays outside for a long time. 


	13. More Arvelia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arvid POV. Takes place after Chapter 20.

Arvid gets home to a silent, dark house. His dad’s bedroom door is shut and he wishes Eret were here to knock like that isn’t embarrassing. 

He thinks about leaving, but that makes him think about Aurelia Haddock of all people and that makes his stomach lurch. Because he didn’t dread when she showed up at his house for the second time today, he almost expected it, but he didn’t expect to keep thinking about it. 

_‘If Eret wants to nag me, he should come himself instead of sending you.’_

_‘He can’t send me anywhere, I’m not a messenger terror.’_

_‘So you aren’t here because you’re running errands for him?’_

_‘Are you coming to the Thorstons’ place or what?’_

He’d offered her a ride, because—he didn’t know why, even, but she looked at him like he’d offered to kick her and started walking. And he knew it wasn’t done, it wasn’t his chosen end of the conversation and that she joked about him punching her father and it seemed authentic. 

And he can’t stop thinking about it. In the compulsive way Eret used to, where it pops up and infects completely innocuous thoughts. 

Aurelia doesn’t like her father. Aurelia doesn’t wear _Haddock_ like a badge of honor. Aurelia looked at him with sharp green eyes and dragged one of those thoughts out of him that he usually left for Eret to phrase better than he could. 

Aurelia has the longest braid Arvid’s ever seen, and he could see it clearly from a couple hundred feet up as he flew above her across the island. Aurelia seems to exist in his mind as a single name, like the Haddock got snipped as soon as she insulted the chief so openly and continuously. 

And that’s one thing. That’s…notable. 

But he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly noticing everything about her and why it’s stuck there in his head like a rock in his shoe. Her nostrils flare when she’s about to say something caustic. She has a freckle above her eyebrow that moves when she talks. He…he can see it in his mind. He…

He should go to sleep. He should let this pass and reassess in the morning. He’s probably just tired from trying to fix his saddle and dealing with Thorston and her death shed and…things will make more sense in the morning. 

They don’t. 

He keeps seeing Aurelia behind closed eyelids, keeps drifting back to her sharp voice and the way she looks at him like she expects something. He doesn’t sleep much. He wakes up, itchy eyed and irritated and determined to figure out what he suddenly saw that was so affecting. 

He flies Wing into town first thing and waits, looking for that shimmering red until he sees her walking down the hill from the chief’s house, hands in her pockets. 

He doesn’t see what Eret saw, it’s not what he’s been listening to for years and years, ever since Eret realized he was old enough to notice a girl. It doesn’t have much to do with the admittedly appealing twitch of Aurelia Haddock’s hips as she walks through town, the sway of her braid down her back, the delicate set of her shoulders. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way that her skirts are always a little too short, which should be impossible because she’s so short. 

Well, not short. Not short in the stocky way that Vikings are normally short, like Smitelout and her father. Small. Agile. Eret’s bird boned shoulders to a new sort of extreme, compact rather than gangly. Tiny, lithe, he wonders how easy it would be to pick her up and ignores the strange warmth that blooms in his chest at the thought. 

She’s…she’s something.

He watches the door of the small bakery on the main square, even though he promised he wouldn’t wait. Aurelia walks out a minute later, holding what looks like a loaf of bread in a small sack and Arvid looks away. He should go back to the ship. It’s winter and the fish are schooling and his dad could use help, surely. 

“Why are you stalking me?” The voice cuts through his thoughts, sharper and more familiar than it should be and he puffs up in spite of himself, patting Wing’s neck with a gentle hand. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“You’re following me,” Aurelia crosses her arms and tugs her fur cloak tighter around her front. Her breath is a puff of mist in front of her face and it makes him shiver, his knees clenching around Wing’s warm sides. “And it’s creepy. Do you need to talk to Eret or something? Because I’m not going to be your messenger, get a dragon to do it.” 

“I’m not following you.”

“Stop—” She stands up straighter, setting her shoulders as her eyes flick down to his chest, “shouldn’t you be wearing a jacket or something? It’s snowing.” 

“Where are you taking the bread?” He blurts, pointing at the bag and ignoring Wingspark’s worried glance over her shoulder.

“How are you Eret’s half-brother?” She laughs, “I’m taking the bread home to eat it. What else would I do with bread?” 

“When…when Eret and I were little, Dad—my dad used to take us to feed fireworms the stale bread.” 

What is happening to him? When he looks at her, something in his brain flicks off and his tongue goes stiff and heavy and useless. He wishes he had someone witty behind him to feed him lines, he…does he need lines? 

“That’s…” she smiles, a small little smile that exists in spite of itself, in spite of the stubborn set of her jaw. “That’s pretty adorable, but this bread isn’t stale.” 

“I wasn’t asking you to go with me or anything,” he looks away from her, at the strip of sleek, purple scales along Wingspark’s neck. “And I’m not stalking you.” 

“Don’t…don’t you have a date or something?” She chews on one of her fingernails, words clipped and muddled around her hand, and he looks at her a second too long. 

“I thought I was trying to get one.” 

“What?” She cocks her head, that heavy braid falling down and laying against her chest. 

“I thought I was trying to get a date.” 

“By asking me where I’m taking my bread?” Her eyes flash and she stands up straighter, genuine smile fading into something tight and upset, tugging at some invisible string through the middle of his chest. “You know, I thought you’d be smoother than this, with your reputation.” 

“What do you mean by that?”

“I just mean that you’ve chased after half my friends. It’s not military strategy, you don’t have to take out all of a target’s surroundings before you move in for the kill.” Aurelia clenches the bag of bread more tightly and walks in a wide arc around Wing’s tail, like she’s afraid of tripping over it. “Stop following me.” 

“I’m not following you,” he insists. “But I might have to start.”


	14. Hiccups Efforts Continue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup POV. During Chapter 21.

As soon as Eret’s through the door, Astrid turns to Hiccup, trying not to see anything but this older, chief character she only superficially knows. It’s hard. It’s getting harder. He looks like himself again, parts of the fifteen year old she so wanted to throttle sneaking through and aggravating her like they used to. 

“What are you getting at?” She snarls, looking him up and down like he’s hiding something behind his back. His arms are hanging almost expressively limp at his sides and she’s utterly unconvinced that this isn’t part of some grand scheme. 

To what? She doesn’t know. But considering that the last plan he had was to marry her so Eret could be heir, whether she liked it or not, and that plan passed almost entirely under her radar until it was basically too late, she doesn’t have much faith in a plot this obvious. 

“What do you mean?” He shrugs, looking at her evenly, almost shyly, like he feels something she used to looking at her face. 

Like he forgot who he is now and what he’s done and everything that’s happened. Like he can just erase it if he sits down for enough family breakfasts. 

Like she still cares if he’s retained some of his sense of humor. 

“You,” she looks down at the table and thinks of the other day. It makes her blush even though it shouldn’t, because it was nothing, it was anger, it was a physical altercation that just happened to exist in the shadow of some old ghost that used to be romantic. “Joking with Eret, telling him to help me.” 

“Being nice?” He raises an eyebrow like he doesn’t know how she could possibly be offended. 

“That’s never been your strongpoint, don’t pretend it’s accidental.” 

“It’s not,” he shrugs, tucking one hand in his pocket and keeps _looking_ at her, like he’s seeing something else underneath the lines her face didn’t used to have. Like he doesn’t care that he looks _vulnerable_ like he didn’t even in the thick of it when she was hitting him with all she had. 

Metaphorically, hitting him.

In reality it was different and complicated and not as horrible in her memory as she wants it to be.

The fact is that she made every decision in her life to not be alone, and now she’s here, more alone than ever, and as petty and stupid and destructive as it was, she wasn’t quite so lonely for a second. 

“I’m not going to fall for it, Hiccup,” she looks at his lips even though she shouldn’t, even though she shouldn’t be thinking about how his freckles still look the same but the rest of him’s different, a patchwork of a life she wasn’t a part of, “so whatever plan you have, just drop it. I don’t need Eret’s help. I don’t need you to play husband.” 

“I know,” he swallows, “and I’m not playing, and I’m definitely not doing anything I expect you to _fall_ for.” His smile is anything but happy and more attractive than Astrid wants it to be, “we’re already married, what else am I going to trick you into?” 

He says it like the words taste bitter and it makes her want to ask. 

That’s the toxic thing Hiccup’s always done best, isn’t it? He’s made her plow forward when she should back off, made her talk in a way that always blew her cover when she should have stayed stealthy. 

“I’m not going to answer that. Or ask what you mean.” 

When he makes her dig, he makes her care, and she doesn’t want to care about anything but the crisp angle of his shoulders, rigid inside the leather of his armor. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” he shakes his head and looks at the table, like he wants her to think he’s staring at that treaty he hates but really he’s remembering a few days ago, the same way that she is. 

“Don’t marry someone if you want them to ignore you.” 

“I don’t want you to ignore me,” he says in that soft, honest voice that’s usually reserved for Toothless or reading Stoick bedtime stories. “I do wish you’d look me in the face instead of like you’re choosing a piece of yak meat.” 

Astrid looks away, back at the table, feeling like she’s been caught. 

She always used to think she was sneaky, that she had to have been really subtle for Hiccup to never notice the way she looked at him. It was later, with Eret, when she couldn’t slip anything by him, that she realized Hiccup just wasn’t paying attention. 

She forces that thought out of her head, that memory of Eret catching her staring with a closed lipped cocky smile. It used to be happy but now it’s just bitter. Lonely. Plus, she should know by now that she doesn’t get to peak through doors to the past without ending up with a child, a divorce, and a hasty political marriage.

“You’re so full of yourself.” It’s not really enough to fill the frought silence between them and she wonders what would happen if she just came out with it. 

If she just looked at him and said she was lonely and miserable and angry that he’s not fighting with her and that she’d really just like to fuck him now to give her something else to think about. 

He’d probably say yes, but if he said no it would feel like rejection and she hates that. He was never sneaky about the way he looked at her, which made it all the more obvious when he stopped. 

“I’m just not going to do _that_ with anyone who doesn’t like me,” he gestures at the table, looking at her in that steady, chiefly way that she never got to see evolve. It’s an unknown part of him, like the scars and wrinkles and gray hair, and she hates how it makes her curious, at some level. It’s the newest thing about him that she wants to know more about. 

“Unless you’re planning on continuing that old wandering streak, you’re signing up for a long life.” She forces herself to look at his face, just his face, to pretend it’s a stranger say this sort of presumptive bullshit to her. 

He thinks that she should care because he’s him, because they had something strong enough to leave a lasting impression still important after fifteen years of ignoring her and all the drama after. She doesn’t want him to know that he’s right. 

She should have told Eret earlier, she should have told him more. At least when things fell apart she should have fixed her mistake. 

“It’s been a long decade, Astrid, I can handle it.” 

She almost asks, again, just…just because she’s not going to ask him for anything else. 

He takes a step back from her like he’s reading her mind and she can see why Eret reacts the way he does. Eret’s really always been more her than Hiccup. Part of her wonders if she did this on purpose, traded herself in chief’s clothing to atone for some mistake she made seventeen years ago. 

“I don’t care.” 

“I didn’t say you have to care—”

“Just stop,” she steps around him, grabbing her axe from the rack by the door, “I—I don’t care what you do.”

He doesn’t follow her. He doesn’t spout a bunch of true but infuriating about being married and the fact that they used to have something. He doesn’t insist that she comes back or that she talks to Eret or that she must feel something for him to take such good care of Stoick. 

He lets her go. 

She can’t get his voice out of her head, the easy, too familiar cadence of _it’s been a long decade, Astrid, I can handle it_. Half joke, half honest, half staring at a flawed mirror that shows him a different reflection than anyone else sees.


	15. Arvelia Continued

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arvid POV. Takes place during chapter 22.

“We agreed!” The chief shouts from the main doorway of the forge and Eret snarls, pulling himself up to his full height and inflating. He’s bigger than the chief, not by much, but it’s there and Arvid wonders if either of them has noticed it yet. **  
**

“You declared, we never agreed,” Eret roars, louder than Arvid has ever heard him and Aurelia steps forward towards the shouting match like someone cued her.

“It’s funny, dad, just because he’s your precious, long-lost son doesn’t mean he’s going to follow everything you say!” Her voice is too large, ludicrous coming from her tiny frame and Arvid is glad for the drama keeping anyone from catching him staring. 

“No,” Eret whirls on her, voice low and deadly, another tone Arvid has never heard. “I don’t need you fighting for me, I—” back to the chief, jaw set forward, reminding me so painfully of Mom. “This isn’t a fight at all, I’m doing it. You can’t stop me,” he shoves past the chief and out the door and Aurelia stares at her father, jaw twitching. 

“Well, aren’t you going to chase after him?” She laughs, moving too much and tossing twitching hands wide. “Aren’t you going to track him down? You can’t let him tell Astrid you were mean and lose the part of the family that you care about.” 

“Aurelia!” The chief’s voice breaks across her name and she narrows her eyes. 

The stare down lasts a strong ten count before the chief glances at the slammed door behind him. 

“Go get him,” she turns away and leans on the worktable, shoulders trembling. 

The chief leaves. 

“I never go anywhere,” Aurelia mutters to herself, and Arvid doubts he’d hear her if he weren’t watching her so closely, so mysteriously attuned to the distressed expression sweeping across her features. 

It’s too quiet, each of her too labored breaths louder than it should be. The wind whistles outside, a few disembodied snowflakes drifting through the slats in the wall. 

“Aren’t you leaving too?” She turns to Arvid, face set into a stern mask even as her eyes glisten strangely in the waning firelight. “I’m sure you have someone to brag to. Shouldn’t you go tell your sad, old dad just how horrible the chief is?” 

A tear leaks down her cheek and she ignores it, stuffing her hands into her pockets as her shoulders start to shake, a rattling shiver that has nothing to do with cold. 

“Are you alright?” 

“Like you give a shit,” she wipes away the next tears that fall, fussing with a pot of leather scraps on the counter. 

He doesn’t notice how much he cares until she accuses him otherwise and he steps towards her, his hand hovering an arms’ length away from her shoulder. Eret was always the hugger of the family. Even though he’s too old and far too bony, he’s—he was always wrapping Arvid and Ingrid into group hugs and holding them there until the back of Arvid’s neck started to burn with unseen stares. 

Aurelia bites back a sob and it breaks whatever manly cool Arvid has left as he steps forward and drags her into his chest. She weighs nothing, like she’s hollow, and his first touch scoots her an inch across the dirt floor. He flinches back, oddly scared he could have hurt her, but if she noticed the contact, she doesn’t show it. Her shoulders shake as he finally tugs her in, and she presses her face into his chest and sobs, impossibly hot air sifting through his clothes and raising goosebumps on his skin. 

He holds her shoulders awkwardly, unsure of where to put his hands as hers clamp around his back. She smells like soot and singed hair and something sweet and sad and lovely and he rests his arm against her shoulders, one hand stroking slowly, uneasily at the back of her head. 

“Uh, there there—”

“I’m not a baby,” she snaps, the words waterlogged and slow, and she’s probably ruining his shirt. He’s horrible at laundry, and he hugs her closer anyway, “and I’m not crying, I’m just…”

“Leaking,” he starts rocking slowly on the balls of his feet, feeling ridiculous and natural at the same time. 

“How…” she pauses to sniff, her bare back expanding against the weight of his arm, “how is it that Arvid Hofferson is the only person not being an asshole to me?” 

“Eret will apologize. He’s…aren’t you the one always telling me I’m too hard on him.” He strokes her hair, “he’ll come through. I’ll—I’ll hold him to it.” 

And he will, even if it means talking to the pompous ass traitor. 

“And my dad is just an asshole,” she says it too quietly, lips rasping over the damp wool of his shirt as her hands flit against his front, wiping her face. 

“I’m not going to argue with you there.” He doesn’t know where to look as she squirms from his grip and steps back, fidgeting with that perpetually short skirt and her shirt’s slightly too long sleeves. 

“It…it makes me want to disappear. Not permanently or anything, just—like Eret does.” She combs her fingers through her hair and rebraids it like a nervous tick, like something genuinely horrible will befall her if she stops moving, even for a second. “He leaves with Bang for an hour and when he comes back, everything is better and…”

She trails off and shrugs, staring between her tiny feet and an ambiguous spot above Arvid’s head. 

“Eret isn’t the only one capable of disappearing,” he holds his hand out to her and she looks at it like she’s never seen anything so bizarre. “Come on, my dragon has heated seats.” 

“Does that actually work?” She laughs, and the sound is a weight off of his chest. “Are girls really that gullible?” 

“I’m really that handsome.” 

“I used to think so,” she catches him off guard with the honesty, a few glossy tears still clinging to her eyelashes and his hand drops to bounce off of his leg. “And then you were so shitty to Eret, and you were such an ass…and then? Then you started stalking me.” 

“My timing was horrible.” 

“I’m afraid of heights. And I don’t really like dragons.” 

“You aren’t your father at all,” he shakes his head and looks towards the door, half-expecting the chief to appear in the doorway, for Eret to barge in and need their help. 

“You say that like it’s a compliment.” 


	16. Hiccup's efforts part 3.0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid POV. Takes place during chapter 23.

Astrid can’t quite sort out the weird, happy bubble in her chest as she’s walking away from Gustav. It’s…she was never vain, her face was never really her concern, but she also wasn’t stupid so she always _knew_ she was pretty. Appealing. That her looks played no small roll in Hiccup’s childhood crush or Eret taking notice of her later. They were there and they were part of her and it wasn’t something she thought about much.

But then she had four kids and grew up and…it’s been years, no, probably decades, since someone put it out there like that. Like maybe, and it feels stupid to think let alone say after everything that’s happened the last few months, but maybe…maybe she’s still got it. 

“I really hate that kid,” Hiccup grumbles, walking a little closer to her than he usually does, like he’s falling back into some old habit they both forgot until now. 

“He’s not a kid, he’s forty seven.” 

“Still a kid.” Hiccup kicks a rock and shrugs his shoulders, looking up at her like he’s determined to shrug it off. She…

She likes that he looks at her with his full focus now. A few weeks ago she would have said that it didn’t matter. That he’d have better luck keeping her happy in captivity if he left her alone. 

But it does matter. It matters to a part of her she tried to kill years ago. It matters when he looks at her like she demands his focus. It matters that he’s _jealous_ , right now, in some stupid, boyish, irritating way. 

He was never jealous of Eret. Not until…well, Eret, and then it wasn’t about her, it was about their son, it was about her having something he didn’t. 

“Come on, it’s just _Gustav_.”

“ _Just_ Gustav?” He scoffs, losing that badly constructed veneer that was trying to say he wasn’t jealous. Over her. And this is absurd and impossible and she doesn’t want to focus on that right now. She wants to go to this council meeting. She wants to have this even if she lost everything else. “Are you saying you aren’t… _offended_ by him talking to you like that?” 

“Like what?” She scoffs, “it’s not like I can be dragged into some other marriage.” 

It’s half a joke. He laughs half a laugh. 

It doesn’t feel awful, like it should, like that part of her that’s still so sad wants it to be. 

“He just shouldn’t talk to you like that.” 

“Because I’m me or because of who he is?” It’s one of those questions that the Hiccup she used to love would have evaded. He would have insisted it wasn’t the issue. It’s a question that the fifteen year old boy with big feet and floppy hair would have answered, painfully honest and more than a little uncomfortable. 

Hiccup says, “both. Mostly because it’s you.” 

It’s somewhere between and she doesn’t know what to think about it. It makes her want to keep talking, which is some ploy he’s been using so much lately that it doesn’t feel like a ploy anymore. It feels like conversation. Not like he wants a right answer or permission or comfort that can’t feel like comfort or he’ll reject it. 

“I—I have four grown kids, Hiccup, I don’t really mind someone calling me hot, I don’t get that these days.” It’s too honest and she expects it to get awkward, or more awkward, because this is an incredibly strange conversation to have with someone who isn’t even really a friend anymore. 

Maybe he could be. Maybe he’s starting to be. 

“Even if it’s Gustav?” He looks horrified. It makes her laugh. 

“Apparently.” She shrugs, patting Toothless’s head when he puts it under her hand, “it’s…not that it matters, really, given how things are but it’s nice to know at least Gustav thinks I’ve still got it.” 

“What’s that supposed—I mean, you’re _you_ , of course—” He scratches the back of his head and makes earnest, awkward eye contact, “you’ve always had it.” 

Astrid looks away. Her face feels hot. She…Hiccup hasn’t embarrassed her in this _sweet_ way since she was a teenager and that’s what this is. He’s being sweet. He’s saying things he shouldn’t say and she shouldn’t let him say it, she shouldn’t like it, she should be so tied up in the life she lost that she doesn’t care that he’s earnest and…well, a little embarrassing and so awkward she’s shocked he’s still here and not running off to hide. 

“What does that mean?” She knows what it means. She doesn’t know how it can mean how it means, how she can hear that and not be bitter for years lost and how awfully he tried to reclaim them now. 

She doesn’t know how he can compliment her and it can be funny and embarrassing and awkward and something she can kind of believe, but she also knows that it’s…interesting and well, the last time she did something for herself she only had three kids and wasn’t really contemplating a fourth. 

“I mean, well—do you not know?” He laughs and his face is a shade of red she hasn’t seen since she grew into her ears. “You’re the prettiest—you’ve always been the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.” 

Astrid blushes. 

She shouldn’t. That’s a stupid thing to say. It’s a stupid thing for her to care about. 

She doesn’t want him to stop again. 

“So you’re jealous that Gustav think so to.” 

“Of course he thinks so too,” he blurts then pauses to think and gods, it’s like…it’s like it’s thirty years ago and she’s teasing him and she doesn’t hate it like she wants to, “you—I—your body.” 

“What?” 

“It’s good,” he winces like he’s scared she’s about to hit him. 

“It’s good?” 

“You’re just repeating me so I can hear how dumb I sound and while I kind of appreciate it because I do `want to stop making an ass of myself, I also don’t like hearing it.” He laughs, “I—you say you have four kids like it’s a thing, like it has any bearing on…uh, how you _look_ or, I mean, and call me a—I don’t know, but if anything you’re hotter than you used to be. To me.” 

She kind of wants to hit him. She kind of wants to knock him down and take another stupid, useless moment for herself. But…but also she wants to let it go. She wants to take that little piece of information to heart because that’s what she has in this attempt at rebuilding, she has this moment and this knowledge and…

And she doesn’t hate knowing it. 

“Are you trying to hit on me?” 

“What? Me? No, Gods no, I’m just—uh—I don’t know I’m just—Gustav isn’t the only one who thinks you uh…you know.” 

“I do?” 

“You’re torturing me on purpose,” he laughs. “And I probably deserve it. But…but you’re beautiful, I’m sorry you don’t hear it enough that’s…that’s my fault at some level and—”

“I keep telling you to stop groveling.” She sighs, “it doesn’t make me feel any better.” 

“Right,” he looks deflated, “I—how about the next time I get the urge to grovel I just hit on you instead?”

And that’s callus. And backward and awkward and she should be mad but…it’s also funny and wasn’t that the whole thing that used to be them? She laughed when she should have hit him?

“Sounds better.” 

“What, really?” He looks relieved and his hands start moving as he talks, like some little piece of that reserve is breaking off of him, “because I haven’t…done anything like that in about a decade and I’ll guarantee it’ll be awful and…” 

“I—anything’s better than…”

“Sorry.” 

“Stop,” she jostles his shoulder with hers and he smiles, rubbing his armor like she hurt him but it felt enough like old times that he doesn’t mind. She doesn’t want old times but she lets him have it because well…not fighting is nice. Occasionally. 


	17. Hiccup Committed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup POV. Takes place after Chapter 24.

Astrid is unreadable, flipping through the stack of documents that he asked her to update herself on at the council table long after everyone else has left. Hiccup left too, he took Eret home and got a few things done there while Eret pouted about being fine enough to help out in the village again even though half his face still has the pulpy, ambiguous shape of a target. But Astrid didn’t come home and Hiccup well…

Well, he decided, for once, that maybe other people’s absence didn’t equate to them needing space and that maybe he should look for her. 

She doesn’t look up right away when he enters and he gets, for the first time, what it must have been like to catch him at work all those years ago when he didn’t want to look at anyone. 

He clears his throat. She turns a page. 

“Hey.” 

She looks up at him, startled. He thinks about walking up beside her, sitting in the chief’s chair and asking her why she’s still here. 

“Hi.” She looks back down at what she’s doing and he gets, for the first time, that his authority is probably not the right token to play. 

Because that’s the thing he’s realizing about Astrid. That as much as she’ll follow and commit and help, being _told_ doesn’t suit her. 

“What are you still doing here?”

She shrugs, “you told me to familiarize myself—”

“I didn’t tell you to memorize every word,” he forces a chuckle and this feels like a fight, like something’s building. Something familiar, something that makes him feel young but not as confident, because now fighting would hurt him more than her. 

“I’m not.” 

“And you don’t want to talk to me because—I mean, why don’t you want to talk to me?” He takes a step forward, looks at that chief chair again.

“I never said that.” 

“You didn’t come home.”

“Why now?” She looks up and the instant of winning her full attention is like a punch to the face. 

“What?” 

“Why now? Of all the times you could have sent someone else, why now?” She pushes the papers aside and it feels like a deadly play in some game he didn’t mean to step into. 

“I…isn’t this enough of a situation?” He asks, and he knows it’s wrong as he’s saying it, he knows he’s caught, he knows she’s bringing up thirty years ago like it still matters. 

He wants it to matter. He wants to finish that fight in a way he doesn’t hate now, wants to rewrite all his younger, dumber self said and did. 

“There have been dozens of bigger situations.” 

“Yes,” he nods, “there have.” 

But none of them have involved their son. He knows saying that won’t help anything, it won’t make her feel more important than Eret, which she is sometimes even though he’s not supposed to feel like that. Maybe it’s because he didn’t get to watch Eret grow this whole time, or maybe it’s just that he’s not as young as he used to be and the person he owes the most apologies to has to come first.

“So why now? Why is it now that you decide to stay home? I—I could handle this on my own.” She says it like she’s convincing herself and he doesn’t mention it because he remembers the last few times she convinced herself of something. 

It never ends up great for him, does it? 

“You could.” He shrugs, tucks his hands in his pockets, “you shouldn’t have to. You don’t have to.” 

“But I could.” 

“I just said that I agree with you.” 

“It doesn’t matter if you _agree_ ,” she grits her teeth, flexes her jaw, looks him up and down in that familiar toxic way that makes him feel young and bitter and ready again. 

He could take her up on it, he knows, she’d let him and they’d both feel better for an instant. They’d both go home and smile and pretend it didn’t happen, even while he felt sticky and wrong and _remembered_ , like no matter what he says she still knows he’s a man, still appreciates it. 

“I know it doesn’t.” 

“You aren’t going to defend yourself? You aren’t going to tell me _why_?” She’s angling for one of those knock down, drag out, strip down on the nearest flat surface fights and it almost sounds good. It sounds relieving. It sounds like he might not be quite so guilty for abdicating some chiefly duty for the first time in thirty years. 

He swallows hard, “I don’t have to defend myself for doing what’s right. For once.”

She sighs, “how’s Eret?”

“Determined to come to work, I told him to sleep it off another day at least.” 

“You can’t do this,” she flexes her jaw, “you can’t care about us and then pretend you don’t, you know that, right? You can’t stay this time and not stay the next. You can’t…” She exhales, like she’s trying to calm down, and her eyes are glassy in the way his never were when he was sitting above her. “You can’t make promises you aren’t going to keep.” 

“It’s not a promise. I’m going to keep it.” 

“I don’t believe you.” Astrid looks old, for the first time Hiccup can really see. Not her age, not a better version of middle aged than him, but old. Old like Gobber, old like she’s seen too much and _lost_ too much and expects to lose more. He hates that he made her look like that. He hates that she thinks she lost him when really he was pulling away as hard as he could. 

“I’ll make you believe me. I’ll convince you.” He feels himself being louder than he needs to be, like he’s talking over the din of every fight she ever lost when she should have won. “I’ll be around so much that you get sick of me being here.” He laughs. It’s not funny. 

“You’ve made those kind of promises before—”

“Thirty years ago!” He snaps, and he remembers what it was like to tell his father that this time was different, this time he really shot something down. “I was young and stupid and my father was dead and I treated you like part of the problem. But now…”

“Time doesn’t fix everything.” 

He wonders if she’s thinking about that night. About their wedding night. About the other day. If she thinks about them all the way he does, sees all the ways it could have been closer if he’d known how brief his chance was. 

“No, but effort does. Trying does. And I’m trying, Astrid, I’m trying so hard.” He hates the way that his voice sounds, echoing off of the walls of the empty hall. “I—I’m starting to remember now, aren’t you? Why we were together in the first place?” 

She scoffs. It’s fake, lofty, like she’s struggling to rise to the position she’s in but she doesn’t know how.

“Don’t leave.” Her voice trembles. It’s a warning she’s not sure he deserves and that makes him want to heed it more than anything else. “Don’t change your mind. Don’t decide—stay. You said you would.” 

“I will.” He wants to say that of course he will but he knows that’s not true, it’s not an of course. “Who else is boar-headed enough to help you with that son of ours?” 

“Gobber, Aurelia…Fuse Thorston, apparently, because you just have to be right even when it sounds impossible.” She stares at him, calculating like he missed so much, “but I want you to do it. So you have to stay here.” 

“I already said I would.”

“Mean it,” she orders, like she has that authority and he realizes that she does, over him, that she never should have lost it. 

“I do.” 

She looks at him for another moment that feels like another excruciating year without her before turning back to her stack of pages, “I’ll be home when I’m done with this.” 

“Ok. I’ll go make sure Eret doesn’t go dragon wrangling until his face goes back to its normal shape.” 

She nods like he’s annoying and he knows he is, but it’s an answer and that has to be enough right now.


	18. Snoggletog Arvelia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arvid POV. Takes place during Chapter 25.

Arvid’s heart skips like a pebble on a pond when he sees Aurelia, hair glinting almost red from the top of a rickety ladder leaned against the chief’s house. And it’s not his turf, it’s quite literally the epicenter of Eret’s side of the island, but he jogs up the hill anyway, Wingspark trotting at his heels and crooning when he grabs the base of the ladder. Splinters instantly bite into his hands and he ignore them, gripping tighter when the ladder sways. **  
**

“What are you doing?” Aurelia looks down at him, faint smile playing at the edges of her frown.

“I don’t think this ladder has been used in a decade,” he says something, anything, to cover the heart-stopping realization that he can almost see up her skirt from this angle. 

She’s been his friend for weeks, ever since that night he gave her a ride home. It’s not any sort of solid arrangement, they chat occasionally. She not so jokingly uses him as a shield from the wind when they’re walking and somehow, Eret’s oldest, lamest jokes are funny again when she tells them. 

And at some dangerous point, he stopped staring at her expressions and moved to the face beneath. He stopped marveling over just how tiny he is, a terror to his nightmare, and started taking in just how tiny she is, how seamlessly she could meld into him. He stopped focusing on the strong set of her jaw and his eyes trailed downwards, captivated by the uniquely charming lean curves of her tiny waist, the slope of trim thighs always poking a bit too far out of too short skirts. 

It’s not what Eret saw, not what Arvid had to sit through hearing about for years. There’s nothing pure or sweet about Arvid’s gaze and it worries him. 

He squints his eyes shut and tries to forget the gentle notch between the curve of her rear and her thigh. How can leggings be warm at all when they hide so little? It’s so easy to imagine the creamy, ruddy skin underneath and—

“Probably longer than a decade,” she grunts and he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry about how the puny sound resonates in his chest. “And before you ask, no, I don’t want to borrow your dragon.” 

“I wasn’t going to offer. 

“Good,” another grunt, the ladder creaks and she steps down a rung, one small foot on tiptoe between his hands. “I don’t need a dragon.” 

Arvid looks at the decorations on the ground, and thinks about Snoggletog preparations at his own home. The lack of them. It’s bare and mostly dark, absolutely cheerless without Eret and Mom giggling about presents they won’t reveal. Without Ingrid and Spitleaf accidentally ending up under the mistletoe every few minutes. Dad said something last night, something like ‘at least there’s no yaknog to hide this year’ and just for a second, Arvid thought that he’d drink all the yaknog Mom could make just for a night of normal. 

“You know, I can practically reach the roof from here,” he reaches up and swipes a handful of low-hanging snow from the edge of the lowest shingle, “if you wanted me to do it—”

“Mom asked—sorry, your mom asked me to do it,” she shrugs, the ladder creaking with the motion, “My dad never trusts me with anything and it’s my chance to prove…” She trails off, stepping back up the ladder and laying her chest flat on the snow dusted roof, stretching to fling a decorative chain over last years’ nail. 

It misses and she leans sideways to catch it, her skirt flapping up slightly. He swallows hard and stares at the side of the house, white knuckle grip shoving splinters deeper into his palms. 

“I don’t care if you call her Mom. She is your mom now.” 

“I do call her Mom,” Aurelia steps down, interrupting his view with her heels because that’s just how she works. As soon as he’s thinking about something else, even for a second, cramming herself into his thoughts like it’s possible he’d forget her. 

“Then call her Mom, you don’t have to change it because I’m here.”

“Don’t I?” She laughs, hooking the chain onto another nail along the eve and turning around to lean back on the ladder. He wills himself to maintain eye contact rather than look up the front of her skirt and it’s a mistake. Her almost shy smile leaves him more dumbstruck than any legs ever could. “It’s sort of…confusing if we have the same mom.” 

“She isn’t my mom,” he insists and Aurelia frowns, taking two careful steps down the ladder to stand at his eye level on the second rung. Her shoulders are directly between his arms, but she’s not touching him, and he almost drags her back to Wing for a ride, just to put his hands on her without question. 

“She’s the best mom I’ve ever had.”

“She’s better at parenting the chief’s kids,” he scowls at his feet, bitterness blooming on the back of his tongue. Just because it’s true and obvious doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. 

Aurelia’s hand lands softly against his chin, ice cold and insistently tilting his head up to look at her. She frowns, her thumb tracing the line of his tattoo and sending sparks through his skin. 

“And that’s what I am to you? Just one of the chief’s many brats?” Her hand drifts away from his face, landing limp and bright red from cold against her thigh. “You know, Eret and I—we didn’t ask for this family or this shitty timing and neither did you, but—but it’s not our fault who our dad is.” 

It’s the least confrontational think he’s ever heard her say, and he sighs, making eye contact and acquiescing with a tiny shrug. She smiles and thinks for a moment before reaching out and resting her hands on his shoulders. 

“So this is what it feels like to be a giant,” she looks around like she’s seeing the sights, braid falling in a thick plait over her shoulder and resting against her front. 

“Your hands are freezing,” he’s too quiet, and she’s too close, icy hands folding together on the back of his neck and pulling him closer, her warm breath flitting against his cheeks. 

“I forgot my gloves inside,” it’s barely a whisper, barely a sound at all and then she’s kissing him, lips warm and electric against his own. 

He leans into her, his hands sliding down the ladder and falling to her waist, fingertips touching behind her back as he tugs her into him. And it’s different, it’s different than some conventional first kiss at the end of some first date that only mattered for making Eret jealous. It’s better and warmer and deeper, and her arms fold around his neck, her nose puffing frantic breaths against his cheek. And she’s clumsy, clumsy and raw and sweet, and his dad is going to kill him. 

Because this kiss isn’t a one time thing. It’s not a one off against a rickety ladder, it’s something he wants to do again, better, right. He needs a hundred more chances to kiss her first, he needs to do it until it doesn’t take his breath away and he can think. He needs to do it until it’s second’ nature. 

His tongue slips between her lips and she stills for a second, terrifying him that he did something wrong. Because Aurelia is different and the same tricks won’t work. He’s as out of luck as he was when she first stormed into his head. Her tongue twitches shyly against his, her fingertips curling in his jacket and holding fast. 

She groans against his mouth, and he leans against her, the ladder creaking loudly enough to snap him out of his haze. 

This is bad. If he doesn’t stop now, he’s not going to stop. She deserves better than this, she’s not just…she’s not just someone he can shove up against the wall and kiss. And even though the thought of just how furious this would make the chief flits across his mind, he ignores it, breaking the kiss with a damp, panting pop. 

“What?” She’s nervous, eyes wide and distracting above kiss swollen lips and her arms tighten around the back of his neck. “Why did you stop?” 

“I—” He’s saved from having to answer. 

“Am I interrupting something?” Eret stands at the corner, of the house, eyes wide. 

“Just decorating, isn’t the house beautiful?” Aurelia shouts back to him, her arms going slack around Arvid’s neck as she turns towards Eret and sighs. 

Eret flushes and there’s obviously some sort of communication above Arvid’s head. 

“Nevermind. I’ll just—”

“What is it?” She sighs, her hands falling from his shoulders entirely, trailing briefly along his chest as her back flexes against his palms. 

“Nothing just…the chief drank three mugs of yaknog and he’s outside puking.” 

“Oh.” Aurelia smiles, too red lips quirking to one side as she steps down from the ladder unannounced, pushing Arvid casually, gently out of the way with a hand on the center of his chest. “We should probably get Wingspark out of here before she has to put up with my dad trying to charm her—”

“That’s probably…” Eret interrupts again, disappearing mostly around the corner. “Oh shit.” He gags. 

He disappears and Arvid shoves his hands in his pocket, torn between being upset that Eret didn’t even look at him and thrilled about everything that just happened. Aurelia seems shockingly unperturbed, turning back to the ladder and lifting it an arduous inch, scooting it down the wall. 

“That could have been worse,” she muses, stepping onto the creaky ladder and fumbling for the decorative chain. “We should go. I’ll finish this later.” 

Everyone is gagging and he shrugs, “sounds like that’s going to take them a while. I can help you finish faster.” 

Maybe he wants to stay and fight. It’s better than being alone. 

“I’m not letting you do it for me,” she snaps and he thinks for a second before stepping forward and picking her up by her waist, lifting her over his head and sitting her on his shoulders, one leg on either side of his neck. She squeals, gripping his hair painfully tight and smacking the chain against the side of his face. “What the Hel are you doing?” 

“It’s easier than moving the ladder,” he steps up towards the edge of the house and she tosses the chain over the next nail, thighs twitching distractingly on either side of his neck. 

“Smart,” she tugs affectionately on his hair and his face flushes at the compliment. 


	19. Snoggletog Hiccstrid Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid POV. Takes place after chapter 25.

Astrid stands in the doorway and looks at Hiccup for a moment, watches familiar fingers testing a knot in something he’s repairing. She used to want things to go back to how they used to be, but she never thought about them getting better. She never realized how much he expected her to blindly follow him until he actually started looking to her for advice. She never realized how much he wasn’t around until he made an effort to come home. 

The last couple months have been…well, not perfect, because nothing is ever going to be perfect again, what with two deeply fractured families crammed together but…they’ve been pretty good. Better than she would have expected. 

Better than things used to be, really, because somehow he stopped making her feel alone or unimportant. She doesn’t feel like she’s asking too much or like he has more important things to be doing at every second of every day. He’s acting like he trusts her, and he’s been doing it for so long and so consistently that she’s halfway inclined to believe that he does. 

He mutters something to himself and looks up, jumping when he sees her staring at him. She laughs, crosses her arms. 

“How long have you been there?” 

“A while,” she shrugs, stepping inside the bedroom—the bedroom that’s supposed to be _theirs_ —and sitting down on the foot of the bed beside him. The few inches she leaves between them feels charged, like the air itself is brimming with potential, and she can’t really remember the last time she felt this way. Calm but excited. Comfortable but aching for something she can’t really put words to. “You know, you could have told me that you didn’t like Yaknog like…thirty five years ago. You didn’t have to keep it a massive secret.” 

“You were always so happy about it,” he shrugs, setting the piece of tack he was working on aside. It’s so very _Hiccup_ in all of the best, most absurd ways, to have their bed covered in dragon tack. The bed he doesn’t sleep on. The bed she wakes up in the middle of every morning. 

At first it was nice, the quiet, the feeling that she wasn’t hurting anyone by existing, by being married. But lately it’s just been cold. 

“It’s funny that Yaknog is somehow the thing you’d deal with to make me happy.” She doesn’t say it like an attack and he doesn’t take it as one, smiling sadly and looking at his hands. They look the same as they always have. Even when he was fifteen and clumsy they were sure and smart and steady, maybe the only thing about him that never really changed. 

She finds herself wondering if his hair is as soft as it used to be, even though it’s almost entirely silver now. She almost touches it, but that would be…she doesn’t know what it would be and she doesn’t know if she’s ready to find out so she clasps her fingers together in her lap, looking at the doorway. The house is quiet. The kids are out and Stoick is asleep. 

“It was a small, easy thing with an annual commitment time of a couple days. That’s about all I was up to,” he laughs, and it’s not self-deprecating, it’s honest in that self-loathing way she used to want to fix.

She feels that long dead but oh so familiar pang in her chest to make him look at himself and see some of what everyone else sees. Of what the village sees. Of what she used to see. 

Of what some small part of her is starting to see again. 

“You know, along with being chief and rebuilding an island and changing every single custom you came across.” 

“Yeah, and you deserved more than me pretending to like yaknog.” He shrugs, his hand hovering at his side for a moment like he’s thinking about reaching for her, but then he stops. 

“That’s true.” She laughs, staring at his hand, trying to remember the last time they actually touched. It wasn’t weeks ago. It was days. More than hours. Long enough ago that she wants to feel it again. 

She thinks about that day, on the table, when he learned the full extent of all the lies she’d told. She liked it more than she should have, even then, liked the quick, clean violence of it. It was how she likes to fight, how she’s always liked to fight. She hates verbal chess matches and drawn out, cold conversations. It was physical and rough and she was so tired afterwards that she could almost pretend that it was ok. Constructive even. Like a good, long workout. 

She hated all those forced pleasantry type touches those first few weeks of marriage. How he’d hug her or kiss her on the cheek because that’s what he thought husbands did and she felt so pressured to stand there and be wifely that she couldn’t lash out. She signed up for it, to be the chief’s wife, and every moment of contact felt like an addendum to a contract she’d signed in blood seventeen years ago.

But not touching her and being _considerate_ in a way that seems like he knows her makes her want to touch him. Even casually, even the punches on the shoulder she used to rely on because she didn’t know how else to act around someone who made her heart pound the way he did. 

“I—So. Arvid and Aurelia think they’re pretty sneaky.” He changes the subject like he has been when he’s trying not to make her mad. 

Like her anger is something to be avoided, something he cares about, something he hates. Like it’s no longer some unavoidable and unpleasant consequence of the plan that had to be right because he thought of it. 

“Arvid’s about as sneaky as a bewilderbeast,” she sighs, because this is worse to think about, the fact that her son still hates her, “I wouldn’t have caught Eret half the time if he didn’t bring Arvid along to brag about it where I could hear him.” 

“I…don’t get mad, or anything, but I wasn’t too happy about my daughter and you know—” He holds up his hands, halfway to surrender, “not that I don’t know Arvid is a great kid, because he was raised by _you_ so he has to be pretty great—”

She kisses him on the cheek. His face turns as red as hers feels. Her lips are tingling, like a bolt of lightning is halfway contained in them, and she licks them, glancing at his mouth, frozen halfway through some word she didn’t hear the first half of.

“Go on.” She looks at him expectantly. 

“I was saying Arvid has to be a great kid, because he’s your son, but I wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of my daughter hanging around him.” He’s staring at her, wide eyed and nervous, voice deadpan like he rehearsed this. Maybe he did. Maybe he sits around thinking about how to talk to her. “But I saw them flying around the other day. Not—I mean, yeah, they were hiding from me, but I saw my daughter on the back of a dragon in the air, and she was laughing and—that can’t be bad, can it?” 

“Are you asking me for advice?” 

“Of course,” he laughs, runs his hand through his hair, twitchy in a way that makes her ache for nostalgia she thought she got rid of, “Aurelia loves you.” 

“I think that this is the longest I’ve seen Arvid hung up on a single girl. And I think that Aurelia can take care of herself. I’ve seen her knock you down a few pegs, and if she can do that, she can handle Arvid just fine.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asks, clearly _joking_ with her. 

“I’m saying that if someone that small can get through the armor plated walls of your ego, then she’ll have no problem Arvid.” 

“Armor plated walls,” he clutches his chest, “that hurts, Astrid. That really hurts.” 

She punches him in the arm and it’s a reflex, the same reflex it used to be, when she was a stupid kid who didn’t know what it meant to like someone so much. Her eyes widen as soon as she does it, because it feels like flirting and she’s realizing that she _wants_ it to be flirting. She’s flirting with him. On purpose.

That he’s still here and that matters and she’s letting it matter. She’s not keeping him out to start a fight. 

“As does that,” he rubs his arm, wrinkles his nose, “are you trying to break me?” 

She rolls her eyes and looks at the open door into the empty house. For some reason it’s exciting that it’s quiet and empty, and it occurs to her that she’s doing something she wouldn’t want the kids to see. She looks back at him, the scar on the side of his forehead that she doesn’t know the story behind, the little silver flecks in his still dark eyebrows, the freckles on his nose and the way that the slanted firelight makes him look younger. He looks like the Hiccup she used to know, but different too, because she never saw the hopeful look in his eyes at the same time as the angles of his adult face. At least it was never directed at her.

He lets go of his arm and his hand bumps against her shoulder. He jumps back like she burned him and opens his mouth to apologize, she’s sure he’s going to apologize, and she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want another nebulous decades late apology and she doesn’t want him to apologize for touching her, not anymore. 

“Don’t,” she cuts him off, bumps her shoulder against his because if she doesn’t she can feel that she’s going to do something stupid. She’s going to grab his hand or kiss his cheek again or worse, and no matter how much this is making her feel like some flirtatious teenager, she can’t act like one, just how she can’t act like an angry twenty five year old anymore either. “I—you’re fine. You don’t have to be so jumpy around me. It’s starting to make _me_ jumpy.” 

“Sorry—I mean, not sorry. I’ll work on it. I’ll keep working on it.” He nods, biting his lip and looking like he always used to when he was planning something. “Milady,” he smiles a hopeful smile like he wants to take advantage of the fact she told him she’d rather be flirted with than apologized to. 

There’s somehow no doubt in her mind that he’s standing there planning _how_ he’s going to work on it. That he’s sitting beside her trying to integrate something that she said into his life. That she’s somehow not an obstacle anymore but something he’s trying to actively include in his decisions. 

“I think…I think I actually believe you.” She laughs and stands up, because it’s hard to be in the same room as him all of a sudden, hard to deal with all of the conflicting ideas swimming around in her head.

She wants to kiss him. She wants to pick a fight, to prove that everything she’s come to know again about him isn’t entirely wrong. She wants to hate him for taking so long to get here. She wants to shove him back on the bed and make up for lost time. She wants to mourn thirty years of mistakes, like maybe, at some level, she never felt differently she just _wanted_ to. 

“That’s…that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” He stands up, smile wide and earnest. “That’s…something.” 

“You’re such an idiot.” She steps forward and wraps her arms around his shoulders, resting her chin against the cool leather of his armor. It feels like coming home, in a way she hates and loves all at the same time. He rests his hands flat on her back, too tentative and too warm and she sighs, squeezing him tighter for a second before letting go. 

He moves like he doesn’t want to let go and for a second she thinks that he won’t, that she’ll start yelling at him about how they were _just_ making progress, but his hands fall slack at his sides as she steps back. 

“I think I’m going to head to bed,” he stretches his arms out, fakes a yawn in that way Eret always does, “Early morning. You know, lots of…chiefly things to do. Early. So I should sleep. Now.” 

It’s like he knows he’ll do something stupid if he doesn’t leave now. She knows the feeling. 

“Goodnight, Hiccup.” 

“Goodnight,” he takes a step towards the door then turns back to look at her, “I—goodnight. Yeah. Goodnight.” 

“Yeah, goodnight.” She follows him to the door and shuts it behind him, leaning against the wood for a second and breathing. She wants to feel stupid. She wants to tell herself that she’s just setting herself up for disappointment and another round of heartbreak. 

But something tells her she isn’t, some stupid little naïve voice that she hasn’t heard in years is telling her to slow down, to trust just another moment. 


	20. Snoggletog Hiccstrid Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup POV, then Astrid POV. Takes place after Chapter 26. 'Tis nsfw.

Hiccup has had worse Snoggletogs. Years of them, frankly, the hall always feeling slightly empty and the feast quiet no matter how many people were there and drunk and happier than he was. He’s trying not to be optimistic, and he guesses he did throw up unusually violently after a few yaknog-free decades of gastronomic peace, but overall today hasn’t been the worst. He looks up from talking with someone about something he’s hardly listening about because even chiefs get a few hours on Snoggletog where they don’t have to be on top of everything, and Astrid is looking at him in that new-old way that makes it really hard not to be optimistic. 

Because she looks like a teenager on a still half wild Nadder, looking at him like she wasn’t sure if he had any other secrets. Like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know them or not or wasn’t ready to ask. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” he pats the faceless voice he’s been ignoring on the shoulder and steps around him, trying to walk more slowly when Astrid looks away like she’s been caught.

He’s not good at waiting. At sticking to her schedule no matter how much he wants _more_. Not even in the way he used to, the way that led to a truly generational accident, but in a way he can hardly put words to. He wants her opinions. He wants her trust. He wants what he could have had if he’d learned how to wait on his feelings decades ago. 

Astrid glances up at him again, like she expected him to cross the room faster, and her cheeks brighten before she looks away again, shuffling a few pieces of parchment like she kept track of this whole feast thing way better than he could have himself.

It’s annoying, honestly, that a sixteen year old boy who talks faster than he ever did is the only one to convince him to slow down, even for a second. 

Then again, Astrid always slowed down time when she was around and Eret’s more her stubborn, altruistic, forward-facing fight than he is anyone else. 

“Important business?” She asks without looking up, squaring the edges of her stack of parchment once or twice. 

Maybe she’s trying not to be optimistic too. Maybe she’s half hoping he won’t ask because every time he does it changes something, shifts one of the foundational bricks in a twenty five year old wall just enough that the mortar knows it. 

“Not as important as the final feast report from Berk’s Snoggletog feast hero.” 

“You’ve got something to finally report to me?” She looks up, slightly red, barely smiling, one eyebrow quirked like she knows what one of the kids – their kids, that internal voice he can’t listen to insists – did and it’ll be easier on them if they just confess. 

“Very funny,” he scoffs, standing next to her and trying to ignore the heat that he’s surely imagining coming off of her shoulder. It’s almost comfortable. Maybe it is comfortable for her. He shoves down that optimistic plasma blast threatening to burst out his mouth and ruin everything. “Given that I forgot tradition entirely—”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she jostles her shoulder against his. 

“You’re as bad as your son, can you take a compliment?” He bumps her back and she’s warm and solid and smells like sweet wood smoke and he doesn’t feel quite so much like making fun of Eret’s pathetic performance with Fuse because he’s not much better, is he? “Thank you. It was great, much better than anything I’ve ever tossed together.” 

“Hm,” she mulls that over, nodding slowly like she knows it means more than it sounds like on the surface, “where is that son of mine? I haven’t seen him since he was—earlier.” she swallows and gets that far off expression that’s starting to feel like guilt and he knows she means Eret. Other Eret. 

The Eret that didn’t used to be _other_ to her but is now. 

“I saw him around earlier, not hogging nearly as much of the attention as I would have expected.” He starts scanning the hall, “I also saw him with Fuse, and as much as I hate to be right—”

“Right,” she smacks the center of his chest with the back of her hand, almost gentle and before that optimism bubble can well and truly blow up in his face, he sees Eret. He’s wobbling slightly over a tankard of mead in the far corner of the hall and having something else to deal with makes today feel more normal. “What?” 

“I think our son is drunk,” Hiccup laughs, even though it’s not really funny, the way Eret’s eyebrows are frowning so far over his eyes that he looks exactly like Astrid twirling her axe and preparing a second swing for some unlucky prey that got away the first time. 

“Where? Oh—yeah, that’s what it looks like,” she sighs, “that’s what I get for enjoying the one night he’s not running around causing a scene.” She looks at Hiccup briefly and points before walking towards Eret. 

He almost lets her go deal with it. Cleaning up would be a gesture, cleaning up would be right and safe and before he can force rational on himself again it hits him: she didn’t react when he said _our son_. She didn’t flinch, didn’t glare at him like he did something to her. 

He jogs and catches up, enjoying her pleasantly surprised face altogether too much for someone smothering so much optimism. 

“I’ve got it.” 

“I figure I saw him drinking earlier, I didn’t say anything—”

“Because he should be old enough to know better. Or young enough to know better, either way.” She crosses her arms but it’s not disciplinary, it’s self-protective, like she’s waiting for some comment on her mothering. 

“Honestly, because he was talking to a girl and I figured he needed the courage.” 

“He’s a Hofferson,” she scoffs.

“Ah, so it comes with the stubbornness and stupidly self-sacrificing nature, got it.” 

She raises her eyebrow with him again, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly before she turns to Eret with instant concern. He glares at her, blue eyes cloudy and miserable and Hiccup remembers Snoggletog before Toothless, before _friends_ , back when the order was to plant his butt to a seat and let it root.

“Come on, let’s go,” she offers him his hand, voice no nonsense but not pleased and Eret rolls his eyes.

“But Mom, I’m having so much holiday fun.” 

“I can see that. Hel, I can _smell_ that,” she takes the tankard from in front of him and he scrambles for it, missing by not an insignificant margin, “Thor’s beard, how much did you have?” 

“We’re a well-equipped trading hub, I’m sure I didn’t dent Beuurk’s supply.” Berk turns into a burp and he turns his glare to Hiccup, but it’s no more personalized. 

Hiccup laughs. Eret scoffs and his head lolls sideways a bit, enough for his beard to catch the candlelight and turn orange. 

“Ok, funny-guy, let’s go,” Astrid steps behind him, slipping her hands under his arms and pulling up and back until he either has to put his feet on the floor or fall. After a long and half-hearted decision process he chooses the first option, taking one staggering step away from his mother and brushing his brand new clothes off. “Home, come on, show some hustle,” she points towards the door and shrugs a shoulder at Hiccup, not quite inviting him along, “you don’t have to come.” 

“I want to.” It’s not a lie like the first few were. 

Maybe that’s the thing he didn’t get when he was younger, the thing he needed to mess up what feels like a million times. It’s not always about want, sometimes it’s about need, his or someone else’s. Sometimes it’s about those endless shoulds that his dad tried and failed to ram into his head. Sometimes it’s not about honesty, it’s about keeping the peace until it’s stable enough to keep itself. 

“Makes one of us,” Eret wipes his face and casually reaches for his tankard, flinching and looking unreasonably hurt when Astrid slaps his hand away. 

“Door. Home. Now.” She starts walking behind him, herding him like a mother Terror until they’re stepping outside into the frigid air, thin snowflakes floating down to join drifts almost as tall as Eret along each side of the path. 

Toothless squeezes through the door after them, slapping Hiccup on the side with an ear and grumbling about being forgotten before wrinkling his nose at either Eret’s presence or smell. Eret stumbles on nothing and skids to catch himself on the ice berm, graceful in his clumsiness the way Hiccup never has been, even on two feet. He’s master of the almost fall and Hiccup’s almost impressed, until half a fall turns into three quarters and he stops the next stage with his face next to his bracing hand. 

“We could fly,” Hiccup offers Toothless to Astrid without thinking and she cocks her head, and again, it might almost be a moment of something close to something but Eret groans into the snow before standing up straight. 

“I’m not riding a Night Fury, do I look like an asshole?” He wipes snow off of his forehead but not his beard, swaying slightly to imaginary music. 

Hiccup laughs again. Eret snorts and snow comes out. 

“Since I don’t have a spare Thunderdrum in my pocket—”

“I’m walking,” he crosses his arms. 

“Eret,” Astrid is too tired to be really stern and Hiccup doesn’t think it would work anyway, judging from the glazed over determination on Eret’s face. 

“We’re thunder- _done_ with this convers—discus—talk.” Eret raises an eyebrow at Hiccup before cracking half a drunk smile, like he’s sharing the bad joke on purpose, and Hiccup shakes his head. 

“That’s awful.” 

“You’re awful,” Eret waves his hand and almost falls and Hiccup doesn’t wait to check before catching his flailing arm and looping it around his shoulders. “I can walk.” Eret insists, even as Hiccup starts dragging him forward at an uneven, three-legged pace.

“I’ve got him,” Astrid tries to duck under Eret’s other shoulder but he writhes away, almost knocking everyone over in the process. She looks a little hurt and Hiccup hates that her mostly hidden flash of sadness is a newly recognized expression for him. That he believed the stubborn refusal that instantly covers it up for so long. 

“It’s a guy thing,” Hiccup explains, re-starting slow progress back up the hill, “he doesn’t want his mom carrying him up a hill drunk.” 

“ _He_ is right here.” Eret burps again, hanging his head like he doesn’t even care where they’re going. It feels a little bit like trust. Or maybe trust’s drunk neighbor, necessity. 

“He is getting a little big to be carried, anyway,” she seems to accept the explanation, her breath even puffs of fog in the moonlight ahead of them. “He’s taller than you now, have you noticed?” 

“About a Gronckle’s ass heavier too, if I’m not mistaken,” Hiccup readjusts Eret’s mostly floppy arm across the back of his neck and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees the shadow of his rooftop differentiate itself from the trees. He should have let Astrid do this, really, because of traction and boundaries and standing back until he’s welcomed forward. 

But she let him say _our son_ and…and in some way, this feels like the closest they’ve ever been to a unit. It’s probably the least complicated moment they’ll ever have. Just him and Astrid and the son that’s so irritatingly both of them that he’s trudging up an icy hill, cracking jokes and glaring at the world like it’ll regret underestimating him. 

“Pretty sure my breakfast was heavier than you are, chief.” Eret sounds a little clearer, a little more miserable. The headache is probably already setting in but he keeps up when Hiccup walks a little faster, Toothless’s tail whisking across the snow as he pads alongside. 

“Big talk for well… _you_.” Hiccup tries to disguise how out of breath he is but it’s probably obvious. It’s more than probably obvious because Astrid laughs, a muffled sound she tries to hide in her sleeve, but her eyes are bright when she looks at him knowingly. 

“At least I can hold my liquor,” Eret says with such determined clarity that Hiccup almost drops him. 

“We’ll see about that in the morning,” Astrid nods, “you know, I’ve heard yaknog is a great hangover cure, I think I still have some ingredients lying around.” 

“Blech.” 

“Eww.” 

Eret and Hiccup say at the exact same time. Eret seems conscious enough to notice that, his arm getting lighter across Hiccup’s shoulders as they take the last handful of steps to the door. 

“Go lay down,” Astrid orders in the voice that no one argues with and Eret gives a pale, tired nod before shouldering open the door and stumbling inside. They can hear him nearly crash land on the blankets in front of the fire before it swings back shut. Toothless hops onto the eave and through the loft window into Stoick’s room and settles with a creak of old boards. 

Then it’s quiet. 

And Hiccup is looking at her and that bubble of hope is pounding in time with his heart and he’s forcing his brain around _goodnight_ when she takes a step closer, looking down the hill at the faint light leaking around the doors of the mead hall. 

“I could have carried him.” She smiles back at him, eyes crinkling around the edges, “I don’t think I would have been huffing and puffing like that halfway up.” 

“Two-thirds of the way, and I have half the traction, so—”

“So you could have let me handle it.” It’s not accusatory. It’s quiet and calm, like water overflowing a bucket that’s been collecting a slow drip for months. “And you could have left…” She swallows and her eyes are boring into his like Whispering Deaths on a mission, like they’re looking for questions instead of answers. “And you could have said thank you about the feast like a normal adult instead of making a fool of yourself—”

“Are you saying I leave and let you handle too much? Ridiculous. The fool of myself part, I mean, but the rest…” It’s a question and a quip. An assurance that he knows he messed up and that it’s too late for an apology. Apologies are bandages in a situation held together by a thread of blood and luck and the horrible, stifling hope that’s slow to bloom and easier to break. 

“Things could be different.” She’s so close he could count her eyelashes. He might have, back when knowing things about her and holding them like prizes felt like really knowing her. But now he can’t count, because counting won’t change anything, but the ending of this long hanging silence seems like it could. “It seems like you want them to be.” 

The bitter part of him that wants to kiss her because he married her, because he signed this into being with enough documented power to over-write his mistakes wants to lean forward, because that should mean _something_ even if it’s late. But he doesn’t. Because it doesn’t mean anything more than proximity and he wants everything else too.

“Just because you can handle things by yourself doesn’t mean you should have to. Or that I shouldn’t be infinitely indebted to your far superior organizational or parenting skills—”

“You don’t have to yak butter me up.” 

“I’m not. It’s all true.” 

She smiles, oddly more relieved than anything, and stares at him for another moment before reaching up almost painfully slowly and putting her hand on his cheek. She pauses there for a breakable second before leaning in and pressing cold, chapped lips to his, and even though he saw it coming, even though she so clearly plotted out each step of this and waited to change her mind, it flashes like lightning to his core. 

She pulls away and stares at him, eyes darting down to his lips as her hand drops to fist in his collar. She doesn’t think about it quite so much the second time, yanking him back to her and kissing him quickly, nose digging almost painfully into his frozen cheek. Her lips move with the urgency off making up for lost weeks, not the bitter edge of lost months or the slow yearning of lost years. His shoulder collides with the doorframe almost painfully and she pulls away, eyes worried, lips bruised. 

“Sorry.” 

“Don’t be.” He stands up, rolling it to make sure nothing’s broken and trying not to focus on the way her hips are almost nested with his. His hands are on her waist and he doesn’t remember putting them there and _Gods_ he can’t breathe until he knows she’s going to do that again. “Really, don’t be, at all—”

She cuts him off with a hug, the hand in his shirt tucked awkwardly between them. Her chin is digging into his shoulder and her hair is tickling his nose and he lets his arms slip all the way around her waist. Her nose brushes the side of his neck and Eret groans inside. The drunk, miserable groan of someone Hiccup should try and talk to if he’s going to keep trying so damn hard. 

Astrid must think the same thing but she’s surprisingly hesitant about it, her fingers dragging across his side as she pulls back, expression open but wary, like she’s hoping she didn’t just make a mistake. 

“I should go talk to him,” she looks at his lips again before steeling herself and reaching for the doorknob. He rests his hands on hers. 

“You did enough, go to bed, I’ll talk to him.” 

“Because that’s going to go so well.” 

“Like he’s going to remember it anyway.” Hiccup wants to lean down and kiss her again but doesn’t because she didn’t ask him to, because he doesn’t want to chase something inherently uncatchable. 

“I’ll talk to him in the morning,” she nods, determined, her version of a compromise. 

When they open the door, Eret is sitting on his nest of blankets, staring at his feet, hair messed up like he’s been raking his hands through it. Astrid looks back one last time before heading towards the bedroom, a half-set nervous expression on her face. 

“Hey,” Hiccup starts, a good six feet away, wary of Bang’s protective breath across his foot. Eret looks as dead as he does tired, mouth half open, hazy glare at the floor in front of him. “Eret.” 

“Huh?” 

“Are you ok? Do you need anything?” 

“No and no.” 

“That’s comforting.” Hiccup deflates slightly, wishing Astrid would come back because even within tonight’s hopeful script, Eret wasn’t supposed to admit it. “Are…are you going to go charging out into the snow without Bang or anything?” 

“Fully promise to wake up here feeling like shit tomorrow,” Eret throws his arm over his eyes, yanking blankets up around his head. 

“I told your mom I’d talk to you.” 

“Good for you,” he snorts, reaching out until he finds Bang and setting his hand on the cool scales.

Maybe it’s the same thing. Maybe he has to wait. 

Maybe he waited with Astrid and she’s never going to kiss him like that again. This all feels like more of a gamble than ever. He looks at the stairs and scratches his head. 

“Goodnight.” 

“Mmh.” 

Hiccup gets upstairs without thinking much. Then he’s alone, surrounded by Stoick’s breathing and his own thoughts swirling around in his head, looking for a place to land. 

Astrid kissed him. 

Twice. 

Both times on purpose, the second time with the intent to push him into a door frame if not anywhere else. And now he’s in a tiny bed in the room with his son and…and it feels unfinished. And maybe that’s the best way to summarize everything. It’s unfinished. It’s dozens of half conversations. A bunch of half-feelings he can’t act on. 

He always used to act. It always used to be on him. That moment of whether they were going to kiss or not, whether some mission was romantic or not. He never really liked any of it. Mostly it seemed like he returned from things and she was fine and angry and it never stacked up to what he did. She never saw heroism as romantic even when he’d decided that was his plan. 

But now it’s about waiting. It’s about presenting himself to be kissed again, because he’s not going to mess up this much progress even if he doesn’t understand it. It’s…completely new territory in a way that feels impossible and maybe it is, maybe at some level this has to be a turning point. Maybe this is the first time the unfinished half of the conversation is on him.

He doesn’t know what she would have done if he’d kissed her back. Not in a bamboozled, allowing himself to be kissed way. He doesn’t know where the line between them is because he let her get there first and now he has to catch up. 

And Eret’s being miserable in the living room and she’s right downstairs and when Hiccup looks out the window at the mound of soft, powdery snow below, it just doesn’t look that far. 

00000

Astrid doesn’t move for an embarrassingly long time after the massive crash outside her window. She stares at the snow for a moment before scrambling for the dagger by the bedside and throwing open the shutters. It’s Hiccup, mostly buried in a snow drift, metal leg sticking straight up. 

“What the Hel are you doing?” She drops the dagger because somehow, impossibly, Hiccup is once again someone that she doesn’t want to stab. 

“That didn’t used to hurt,” he sits up, rubbing the back of his head and rolling the shoulder she rammed into the doorframe when she kissed him. 

Because, also impossibly, that happened and she’s not full of that unique kind of guilt that has applied to him for decades. It feels new, like the rest of him does. What she feels when she looks at him isn’t that old confusion, that feeling of desperate inevitability. It’s like she knows him now separately from who he used to be and it’s not that she doesn’t remember all of that, it’s just that she’s kind of starting to like the man he is now even more than everything else. 

She kissed fifty-one year old Hiccup with the gray hair and the still boyish grin. 

“When you were seventeen maybe,” she snaps as he climbs out of the hole he made, a bit rickety, but smiling like he thinks she might be impressed, “why the Hel did you jump out the window?” 

“I wanted to talk to you.” He steps up to the other side of the windowsill, limping slightly and leaning his hands on the frozen wood. 

“Did you forget where the stairs are?” She looks him up and down because somehow she’s worried that he’s hurt. Not worried that she’d have to take care of him, but genuinely worried that he injured himself, and she kissed him and no part of her really regrets it, no matter how much easier that might make things.

Especially when he’s showing up at her bedroom window in the middle of the night like she always kind of hoped he would when he got back late. It’s a teenage hope played out a few decades too late and it’s ridiculous and stupid and she forces a smile down because it was also stupid and dangerous. And this Hiccup, the one she’s gotten to know now, was willing to do it just to impress her. 

“Eret’s out there being grumpy,” he shrugs, looking at her with that brand new, bright eyed focus she still can’t seem to get used to, “and I don’t know, it seemed like it might be more romantic this way.” He shrugs, wincing slightly like he might actually be hurt and she wants to hit him almost as much as she suddenly wants to kiss him again. 

“You’re an idiot.” She reaches through the window and starts brushing snow off of his shoulders, glaring at him when he winces again. “I’m shocked you survived this long doing boneheaded things like that.” 

“I’m durable.” He shakes his hair out like a dragon coming in from the rain and a soggy, half-melted clump of snow sticks to her cheek. He laughs and wipes it off, his freezing thumb lingering a second too long and she wants to lean into it. She wants kissing him to change something. “Sorry,” he whispers, voice low, like this is one of those rare things for only her to hear and she thinks he’s looking at her lips and all of this feels new, like they’ve broken ground in some new, untouched direction that they haven’t managed to mess up yet. 

“Don’t be.” She kisses him and his nose is cold against her cheek and he makes a happy but surprised sound against her lips, like he didn’t see this coming even though he was the one jumping out of windows and talking about romantic. It’s different than earlier, where he clearly was trying not to mess anything up for himself, now he’s involved, tongue swiping across the seam of her lips, hand in her still half braided hair. He leans into her, soggy, frozen chest pressing against hers through her nightgown and she shivers, “get in here, you’re freezing.”

“I’m fine,” he brushes her off, hand cupping her jaw and pulling her lips back to his. And it’s gentle and slow like he’s trying to remember this and she wants to make it memorable. She wants to move, forward or backward or whatever this is. She wants to make sure his shoulder is ok and she wants to catalogue all those new scars she’s only seen for all the wrong reasons. 

“I’m not,” she wraps her hand in his shirt and tugs, “get in here.” 

“Ok, yeah…ok,” he kisses her again, fast and fumbling, before pulling back and getting one leg through the window. And her hand is still tangled in his shirt and the grace of his fall from the second story repeats itself, sending them both stumbling back against the edge of the bed. Astrid sits rather than falling and Hiccup manages to catch himself on her shoulder with a hand that almost feels confident, like he doesn’t think she’s going to shove him off.

And Gods, she doesn’t want to, she wants to warm him up. 

The wind gets one last gust before Hiccup closes the shutters, wrapping the cord through their handles in the pitch black and leaving the room quiet and still, lit in thin seams by the moonlight. His clothes drip onto the floor and he clears his throat, his voice unsteady like he’s not quite sure of the situation. 

Good. That feels better. Different. Something new in a situation made of a lot of old that went wrong last time. 

This Hiccup knows how to be patient and more than that, he seems to want to be. It’s more thrilling than she would have thought, the open-endedness of being the one to make the first move. 

“I can light a candle.”

“Or you could come here.”

Clothes that looked new and fancy earlier feel like wads of soggy cloth in the dark room and Astrid fumbles with them for a minute. It feels fast and that’s not always good but she wants him, not soggy cloth. She wants to feel him and know this is real and as good as it felt when she kissed him and didn’t feel like she was doing anything wrong. It takes a moment to find the top layer and pull it up. Hiccup sputters when it clings around his face before pushing it over his head. 

“Are you…” He pauses, breathing too hard and daring to kiss her jaw and her neck, lips verging on the line between hungry and cautious. 

“You’re freezing,” she grabs at the rest of his layers of clothes, pushing them upwards. “Get these off.”

“Really?” 

“Stop acting so shocked.” She opens her eyes, making enough sense of the darkness to see him staring back at her. “Just…you’re freezing.” 

She wants to warm him up. It’s a ruse and she doesn’t want to tell him that and for once he doesn’t make her, pulling back far enough to strip layers off over his head. They hit the floor with a squish and when she sees a glint of skin she reaches out and grabs him again, hands warm against his nearly frozen ribs. 

“Oh my Gods, you’re warm,” he kisses her again, leaning half on top of her until she rolls him over so that he’s on his back on the bed. 

“I didn’t jump into a snow bank.” She kisses his chest. 

“Worth it.” He’s all cool skin and slow searching hands, grazing up the line of her arm to her face and cupping her chin like it’s going to break.

She’s less gentle, less tentative, her hands sweeping up his chest and counting scars, tracing trails she hadn’t realized she’d been plotting ever since things started changing. Ever since he acted like he wanted _them_ more than he wanted to say he had _her_. The thing about darkness is that he feels the same as he always did, skin peppered with scars and stretched over lean, dragon-riding muscles. He’s shaking now, though, cold or excited she doesn’t know but she does jump when he puts his hands against her waist and starts pulling up her nightgown. 

“What? Is this ok?” 

“I’m fine, your hands are just freezing.” She trails off when his lips find the side of her neck, not cold at all. He slides his hands under her nightgown and to the back of her thighs. She jumps again and he laughs into the crook of her shoulder. 

“That better?” 

“Jerk,” she gasps when he presses freezing knuckles against her sides. In this lighting, she could believe that they’re nineteen again but she doesn’t want to. She kisses the scar above his eyebrow, the one that she doesn’t recognize, the one that belongs to the Hiccup laughing underneath her right now. 

His hands are barely warmer than ice and that makes this feel new too, the way his fingers are trembling and clammy as they trace the crease at the top of her thighs, patient enough to drive her crazy. His mouth is moving too slowly against the side of her neck and despite the temperature of the room she’s starting to sweat. His fingernails bite into the back of her thighs and she bites her lip, pushing his chest flat back on the bed and kneeling over his hips. 

He has better luck getting her nightgown off than she had with his shirts and she reaches for his belt, laughing against his cheek when she finds it. 

“Did you not get undressed for bed at all?” 

“You kissed me, I was distracted.” 

That’s flattering in a way it shouldn’t be, it should be annoying, it should feel like pressure to do something she said and thought she’d never want to. But that was before Hiccup tried. Before she got to know him as he is now. The Hiccup that she likes. The one that touches her like it’s special. 

She kisses his chest and finally gets the belt unlatched, shoving almost lazily at his pants before they’re kissing again, Hiccup’s hands dragging up and down her back, tracing her like he’s learning something from it, like he’s cataloging her. Because she’s new too, and it’s not like that fateful night seventeen years ago when she wondered if he’d reject the changes, because he tried for this. He didn’t walk in and take what was always his, at some level. He waited for her to decide. 

He arches his hips up so she can push his pants down and the part of him that isn’t patient at all presses against her thigh, and suddenly this is all taking way too long. She shoves his pants to his knees, ignoring the sound of stitches popping and grinds down against him, the linen of his underwear doing nothing to mask the shape of him. 

“Gods,” his fingers dig into her hips and he holds her against him, “did you just rip my pants?”

“They were in the way,” she kisses his shoulder, dragging her teeth against the sharp line of his collar bone and making him shiver. She grinds against him again and his hand trembles as it slides up her side to so gently cup her chest. It feels like she can’t get close enough, all of a sudden, after so long protecting her distance. “Touch me, what are you waiting for?” 

He groans, his thumb flicking across her nipple as his hand tightens on her waist, pressing her harder down against him. He’s throbbing, the muscles on his stomach twitching when she drags her fingers across them, reaching for his underwear. He lets go of her waist to catch her wrist, bringing her hand to his mouth and kissing it. 

“At least give me a chance to not make a fool out of myself.” 

“You jumped out a window,” she bites her lip when he tugs gently at her nipple, leaning up to kiss her neck, nosing her braid out of his way. He doesn’t seem to get the picture that this is a desperate situation, that she won’t hesitate to catch fire if he doesn’t do something soon. “It’s too late for that.” 

“You know what I mean,” he sits up so that she’s on his lap, her chest pressed against his still cold one, “you feel too good and I’ve been trying not to think about this way too long.” That makes her throb in a way she thought she’d forgotten and she wraps her legs around him, trying to find that friction again. 

“Now you’re thinking too hard,” she mumbles against his lips between kisses, moaning when his hands slide down her waist to pause on her hips, his thumbs stroking the crease of her thighs. 

“Right,” he urges her off of him, “like I can think at all.” He takes his boot off and pushes his pants down over his foot. They catch on his prosthetic for a second and he unstraps that too, casual about it in a way completely unique to this new Hiccup. He used to waffle but it doesn’t seem to bother him at all now, the metal thunking to the floor before she’s pushing her back onto the pillows and climbing over her. 

He’s gentler than she was with him, more focused, his fingers tracing an evenly paced path down her front as he kisses her, like he waited this long to get here and he’s not going to burn through it. He pauses at the patch of hair above her center, lingering long enough for her to dig her heel into the back of his thigh, groaning impatiently. 

“Hiccup,” she reaches for his underwear and he lets her this time, almost casually touching between her legs when she gets them down over his ass. She twitches at the contact, biting her lip when he pauses on just the right spot and rubs a gentle circle with his fingertip. She wraps her hand around him and strokes, laughing when he grunts, his head falling almost too hard against her shoulder. 

“I can’t believe this is happening,” his breath is damp against her chest and his finger slips inside of her, curling and pumping slowly. It makes his length twitch in her hand and she arches into him, guiding him down towards her. 

“I can,” she kisses his ear, nipping it gently when he pulls his finger out of her, his hand damp when it grips her waist. He lets her line him up and starts pushing in slowly, shifting weight to his elbow so that he can look at her, eyes all pupil in the dark. 

It feels good and more than that, it feels right. Like she’s finally close enough to him when his hips fully press against hers, all of him throbbing inside of her. His eyes flutter shut when she presses up into him and he kisses her, gentle and distracted, as he starts to move, short little strokes like he can’t bear pulling out of her too far. 

He strokes her hair out of her face, hand achingly gentle on her cheek, and white hot affection curls in her stomach. She tangles her fingers in silver hair, kissing him harder, dragging her teeth over his lower lip and wrapping her leg around his hips. He speeds up at that, the sound of skin on skin not quite loud enough to drown out the groan low in his throat when she moves with him. It’s too much and not enough and when his pace falters, he pauses inside her, breathing hard against the side of her neck.

“Just give me a minute,” he traces his hand down her side, squeezing her ass, “I told you that you felt too good.” His fingers walk over her hip and slide between them, rubbing a purposeful circle against the sensitive bud between her legs. 

“I want you to feel good,” she rocks into the touch, kissing the skin under his ear. His hand stutters against her and she likes that she’s affecting him, that he wants her enough to feel so overwhelmed. 

“I want this to _last_ ,” he laughs, a frustrated sound that echoes in his chest and he rocks impossibly deeper into her, fingers flicking across her in a clever way that makes her toes curl. “I’m not messing this up again.” 

And it’s earnest and vulnerable and he starts moving again, just right, like he’s remembering and discovering something new at the same time. The heat starts to build in earnest, low in her stomach, and he’s stoking it with every stroke. She pulls him into a kiss that turns clumsy, his fingers fumbling against her as his rhythm starts to falter and he moans into her mouth, desperate and hot and it’s suddenly enough. 

She bites back a cry and her fingernails dig into his shoulders, dragging him along with her as all that heat melts all the way through her fingers and toes. His last thrust is deep, committed, and he presses his forehead into her shoulder, arms wrapping around her arched back and holding her close. He whispers her name and she doesn’t think she’s heard that tone before, it’s as new as the rest of this. 

He stays there for a moment before rolling off of her, laying a few inches away with his eyes closed, like he’s not sure that he’s still allowed to touch her. She doesn’t want him to wonder about that anymore and she wraps her leg over his, resting her head on his shoulder and watching the line of his sweaty chest move up and down. His arm lands lightly on her waist and he clears his throat, barely louder than his rushing blood under her ear. 

“That was…” 

“Great,” she fills in, “I…Happy Snoggletog.” 

He’s quiet for a long minute, his hand tracing carefully over her side like he’s scared she’s going to break. 

“What?” 

“I didn’t say anything,” he pulls her closer, pressing quiet kisses against the top of her head in a gut-clenching way that’s anything but hot. 

“You’re thinking.” 

“Yeah.” 

“A little too much,” she leans up, resting her chin on his shoulder and kissing his cheek. “What’s wrong?” 

“I—I don’t want to ask.”

“Since when?” 

“Since—is this just a one time thing? If it is, I can—I’ll wait, for the next one, I will, but Gods—it’s–how am I going to live knowing that I did enough right once that—”

“We shouldn’t tell the kids.” She kisses his collarbone and lays her head on his shoulder, “it’s—have we ever had anything that was just ours?” 

He laughs and it vibrates in her ear, “I guess not.” 

“That’s new too,” she lets her eyes close, trying not to worry about it as her arm curls around his chest. “Just…stay a while. Then go back upstairs and…” 

“And we’ll sneak around? Like teenagers?” He kisses her head again, his arm curling tighter around her, pulling her against his side. “Not that I’m saying no, but—”

“We’ll figure it out,” she says like she has any right to claim things like that. “But right now just…stay for a while.” 

And the new Hiccup doesn’t leave anyway. He doesn’t claim to be righteous or important or tired. He just holds her, and she wants to believe new Hiccup so much it hurts. It hurts worse that he hasn’t given her any reason to doubt. 


	21. Astrid and Ruffnut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid POV. Takes place during Chapter 39.

Astrid scowls when Ruffnut approaches her in the market, walking faster like she can avoid the conversation. But this is Ruffnut, who has never been polite for a second, and she grabs Astrid’s shoulder, tugging so that Astrid will face her. 

“Slow down, woman, it’s not a race.” 

“What do you want, Ruff?” 

“That’s not a very gracious way for the chief’s wife to greet me,” she cocks an eyebrow and Astrid sighs. “No one’s supposed to know you’re cranky, right?” There’s something caring in it, though, and Astrid rolls her eyes. 

She’s so overloaded on sympathy that she’s going to scream. It’s not like they even told anyone and the healer’s wouldn’t share, but everyone knows something is wrong from the fact that Hiccup hasn’t braved the sun in over a week. He hasn’t braved anything, really. He just stares at walls and at her like she’s something he lost all over again. 

“If you ask me how I’m doing, I’m going to hit you.” 

“As much as I’d like a brawl to keep me young, I actually do have something to tell you.” Ruffnut adjusts the basket she’s holding on her hip, “I know you’ve been busy but mother to mother, I thought you might want to tell some of the old biddies around here to back off of your son.” 

“What?” Astrid blinks, not entirely sure that she’s not hearing things. “Who’s doing what?” 

“I just saw Mrs. Ack about to kidnap the kid, poor Sigurd, being replaced with a younger model.” Ruffnut laughs, “and last week Mrs. Jorgenson must have let a yak into her house on purpose to get _help_ with it. It’s becoming sort of a racket and because of the bond of a shared grandchild, I figured I should clue you in.” 

The shared grandchild comment hurts enough that Astrid’s sure she’s not dreaming. If Rolf would talk to Eret, maybe he’d talk to her. Except what Eret said was sort of right, he didn’t ask to be born, Astrid well…she’s leaned into this and committed and it all felt worth it until Hiccup’s eyes went dead and he started wandering around like a ghost. Now she’s lonely, stupidly lonely. It feels like loss again in a way she wouldn’t have expected while Eret is walking around being chief, like she wanted for him. 

“You’re losing me,” Astrid blinks, trying to put what Ruffnut is saying together in some logical way, like that’s not inherently a lost cause. 

“I knew this day would come,” Ruffnut shakes her head like she’s enjoying this far too much and Astrid kind of hates that this weird conversation is the only thing that’s felt half normal since she got the good news in the first place, “well…your son is becoming a man and like his father before him, people are noticing.” 

“You’re talking about Arvid?” Astrid’s stomach churns with that lonely pang and she takes a step back like Ruffnut will let her escape. “I don’t think he’d care what I had to say about it—”

“What? No, your other son.” 

“Rolf?” Astrid cocks her head. 

“Gods no, the one going around running errands for people in those tight pants.” Ruffnut holds her hands out, “not that I’m noticing, but everyone else is. They’re gossiping around wells like teenagers about it, honestly, it’s like none of them moved on from their crush on the big guy.” She points at the statue of Stoick the Vast that’s carved into the mountain and Astrid shakes her head as soon as she gets it. 

“Eret?” 

“You’re being so dense about this I’m just going to check,” she winces even as she says it and what’s gone so wrong that even Ruffnut is being halfway sensitive about something, “you’re not talking about your ex, right?” 

“My _son_ , Eret, the ginger beanpole who trips over his own feet more often than not.” Astrid chooses to ignore that the weird loneliness that rises in her at Ruffnut’s last statement. “Women are gossiping about Eret?” 

“Don’t stab the messenger terror,” Ruffnut shrugs, “I thought Mrs. Ack was going to try and keep him, truly—”

“Eret,” Astrid holds up her hands in a circle and makes it a little smaller, “the one who could fit through this hole, Eret?” 

“Have you looked at him lately?” Ruff heads off Astrid’s scowl, “he’s got what? Two or three inches on Hiccup now?” 

“Everything he eats has to go somewhere and I guess it’s up.” She tries to picture him in her mind and he’s still eight there, all big blue eyes and bony limbs. At most he’s sixteen and beardless and angry. 

“Oh my gods,” Ruffnut grabs Astrid’s shoulders again and turns her to face the front of the forge. Eret is leaning on his elbow on the window, talking to Fuse Thorston and Smitelout Jorgenson is glowering at him. “Look at your son, ok?” 

“Oh my _gods_ ,” Astrid feels the color drain from her face as it clicks. Maybe she needed Smitelout in the frame to see it, especially because she’s looking at Eret like he’s never done anything right in his life. 

And she’s seen this before in the weirdest way, or more like hasn’t seen it, because she didn’t notice it with Hiccup either. It was all at once, one day he was _different_ and she felt differently about it and acted differently and well, now they’re here and maybe it’s dramatic, but suddenly she sees Eret looking more man than boy and Fuse staring at him like she’s waiting for him to notice her and Astrid’s stomach churns. 

And Eret’s been taking on so much responsibility, he’s been making so many decisions for the village without asking anyone first. Like it’s not a big deal. Like he’s self-inflating to fill a role he hasn’t grown into yet. 

There’s something else there too, in his posture, something taller than Hiccup ever was. Broader. Flexing like he wants people to look and there’s focus on Fuse, yes, a clumsy kind of fast talking that’s absolutely Hiccup. But he was raised by Eret, wasn’t he? And she remembers what she saw there before she could admit it to herself. 

“There we go,” Ruffnut squeezes her shoulders and lets go, “now maybe put the fear of Thor into Mrs. Jorgenson before she goes trapping a wild yak—”

“She’s not the one I need to talk to,” Astrid takes a step towards the forge and Ruffnut catches her arm again. 

“Wait, what are you talking about?” She looks tough even as Astrid glares at her and shrugs her grip off, “I don’t know if your ever perceptive eyes took in the whole situation, but my favorite niece is working up to making a move over there—”

“Yeah, on my _son_ , who—”

“Who is absolutely clueless and…reasonably harmless because I don’t think he’s realized the growth spurt yet either.” Ruffnut shakes her head, “clueless, Astrid, really. How did that even happen? You and Hiccup are not stupid people—”

“Clueless is better than the alternative,” Astrid snaps, suddenly more scared than angry in a way she never is. It’s not like the baby she lost. It’s not like the kids who won’t talk to her but are still safe on Berk. It’s not even like Ingrid, who she could never keep down no matter how much she tried. It’s Hiccup.

It’s the fact that she never had any control over that. Not for a second. Not when they were kids, not when his dad died. Not when he left and found everyone else in the archipelago who could see what had taken her too long. Not when she married Eret or when she messed that up. Not even this last fall, when he slowed down. When he waited for her to go to him. It wasn’t a choice, not really, and it definitely wasn’t control. It was as inevitable as the rest of it.

But Eret is her son and she’s here and she’s not going to let that happen again. 

“What alternative?” Ruffnut frowns. 

“The one where he gets to act like he knows everything.” She waves Ruffnut off and walks towards the kids.


	22. Astrid and Smitelout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Astrid POV. Takes place during/after Chapter 47.

Astrid is out front chopping firewood when Toothless lands and Hiccup jumps off, grinning and pulling her into a hug tight enough that it almost lifts her off her feet. She holds her axe away from him and shoves at his shoulder, trying not to laugh. 

“Axe, Hiccup, I’m still holding the axe.” 

“I don’t care,” he kisses her on the cheek and pulls away, wiggling still mostly brown eyebrows at her. “Our son is on a date.” 

“What?” Astrid swings the axe so that it sticks into the stump nearby and wipes her hands on her skirt. “Isn’t he a little busy?” 

“Busy or not, I saw him eating _alone_ with one Fuse Thorston and they were holding hands.” He wiggles his eyebrows again, “and he was super flustered when I went over to ask him about Ingrid—”

“He’s supposed to be with Ingrid,” she frowns, “is he still there? I should go remind him that maybe his sister is more important than his love life right now—”

“He’s seventeen,” Hiccup pats her on the shoulder, “is anything more important than his love life?”

It’s one of those times where she realizes that she started pretending at some point, without even realizing it. They’re becoming less frequent and more jarring lately, especially since she started talking to Eret again, as terse and necessary as it’s been. But sometimes, she realizes there’s thirty years locked away in her head, thirty years she’s ignoring because they’re complicated. 

“I don’t know, some people are more focused on chasing down dragon hunters.” She tries to say it gently and mostly succeeds, because Hiccup’s enthusiasm barely dips. 

“Are you not hearing me?” He nods, “they were holding hands. I saw and when I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder he jumped about three feet in the air and turned bright red. It was a date.” 

“He’s too young to be dating.” She looks over her shoulder at the early summer sun that isn’t even threatening to set yet even though she’d like it to. “If he is, he should definitely be home by dark—”

“Why?” Hiccup cuts her off, “that’s never been a rule before—”

“Well, he’s never been caught on a date before.” 

“It’s not like he was doing anything bad, Astrid.” Hiccup turns away to loosen Toothless’s girth slightly, like he’s not planning on flying anywhere else today. That makes her want to get on Stormfly and go down to the village herself. She at least needs to see, no one else knows what to look for. “Plus, I’ve been calling this for months now. It’s not even sudden. I only went over there to tell him someone was looking for him and to check up on Ingrid.”

“Who he apparently forgot about—”

“Who he got to agree to let Gobber look at her hand,” Hiccup sighs and turns back to her, “what’s your problem with this? He’s seventeen—”

“He’s a child—”

“Aren’t you the one always telling me that he’s practically grown up?” Hiccup tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles. “I know what this is, you’re mad that he’s only tolerated me for a few months and I’m the one who called it. You’ve just got to see them together and you’ll get it. It just…works.” 

“I’ve seen them together,” Astrid shrugs, deflating slightly, because everything she says is starting to sound less and less good-natured about the situation. “She looks at him like he’s as cool as he thinks he is.” 

“This is Eret you’re talking about,” he snorts, “he doesn’t think he’s cool.” 

“Yet,” she frowns, “maybe you’re right. Maybe he’s just…growing up. And going on dates without telling me first.” 

“That just means he really likes her,” Hiccup grins and it’s back up to full excitement level, “I’m just saying, since it’s Tuffnut and all, we should probably consider at least thinking about whatever bride price he’s going to ask for—”

“What?” Astrid snorts, “bride price? He’s seventeen—”

“People get married at seventeen,” he gets the look like he’s been ignoring thirty years too, “and it seems to work out better than starting late.” 

“Has he talked to you about that?” 

“Well, no,” he has the sense to looks sheepish, “I’m just saying. They were _holding hands_ , Astrid. It was adorable.” 

“I’m glad you think so,” Astrid looks at her axe, “and he said Ingrid will let Gobber look at her hand?” She grips the handle and pulls it out of the stump. “I guess that works. I don’t know why she has to be so stubborn about it.” 

“Is that a joke?” Hiccup kisses her forehead, “I’ll start dinner so you can keep telling that tree who’s boss.” 

She almost tells him not to, because she’s decently hungry and Hiccup ruins as much as he cooks but the gesture makes her smile. And there’s some leftover breakfast, because she’s used to cooking for Eret, and Aurelia just isn’t picking up the slack. 

“I’m just getting firewood,” she swings the axe a couple of times to loosen up the shoulder that tightened when he interrupted her. “Just give me a minute.” 

“No problem.” He shuts the door behind him and she starts in on the next dead tree in the line in front of the house. 

She doesn’t want to think about the slight possibility that Eret is on a date, but she can’t seem to think of anything else. And it’s not that she has a problem with Fuse, she doesn’t. Really. She’s sure that a Thorston who already bombed her house once is completely over it by now and could be completely sane. And if she’s not sane, she’s what Eret seems to want, at least for right now and…

And there’s nothing Astrid can do about that. And it’s killing her. 

Her parents never liked her with Eret. Or they did after he married her and did the right thing, but even then, they warmed up slowly. And no matter how many times they asked her if she was sure, their concern only drove her closer, because she was an adult, determined to actually make a decision for once instead of sitting around waiting for someone else to. 

And it’s not the same, because Eret is just a kid and if he was embarrassed about being caught holding hands, that means he’s not doing anything else. Not that Astrid was ever too good in stopping the everything else. Rolf wasn’t ever a problem, but that’s because Rolf never met a rule he didn’t like. Ingrid well…that’s different. Arvid never saw it as a problem and arguing with him only made him more determined. It was only when he was ignoring her completely that he settled down. 

Maybe if Eret only wants something to do with the insane, explosives expert, Astrid’s influence has something to do with it. Maybe she messed him up.

She plants the axe back in the tree stump and wipes her hands again, looking for her next target. They have plenty of firewood, but it’s as good of an excuse as any. Maybe soon Ingrid will be ready to get up and training again soon, that could be better than whacking at trees. 

“Nice swinging Mrs. H,” Smitelout announces herself with a low whistle. “Wait, is that different now? Nope, still H. Both H.”

Well, she was always tactful. 

“Can I do something for you, Smitelout?” 

“Kind of,” she holds up a length of leather, “could I measure your hand?” 

“You walked all the way up here to measure my hand?” 

“Your son’s are freakishly large,” she shrugs, “I did ask him first though. If you’re busy—”

“No, I’m not busy,” Astrid isn’t exactly proud of the idea that pops into her head, but she holds her hand out, “actually I need to ask you something.” 

“I didn’t do it,” Smitelout pauses. 

“You didn’t do what?”

“Nothing,” Smitelout steps up and holds the leather against Astrid’s index finger, making a white mark on the leather with her fingernail. “What did you want to ask me?” 

“Do you ever see my son and Fuse Thorston together?” 

“When aren’t they together?” She snorts, turning Astrid’s hand and measuring across the tips of her fingers. “They’re always scaring off my customers by doing all their flirting like, right in front of the forge. Can you make a fist?” 

“So they’re serious.”

“I mean, no, they’re always goofing off because neither of them has enough to do. They should try getting a real job, for once,” she chuckles, measuring the distance between Astrid’s knuckles. 

“But they…get along?”

“I don’t really hang out to watch them make out, Mrs. H, I have better things to do.” 

The detail with which Smitelout is measuring suddenly makes sense and Astrid sighs, because of course she has to worry about everything at once. And it’s almost worse, because she knows Smitelout better than Fuse. 

“Why do you need to measure my hand?” 

“Ingrid fucked her axe up,” Smitelout rolls her eyes, “no one takes care of their weapons around here, I swear. But she brings me this—can you spread your fingers?—fucked up axe and wants it fixed and the balance flipped on it? She doesn’t know how hard that shit is, it’s easier to just fix her hand.” 

“You’re forging Ingrid new fingers?” 

“That’s what I just said,” she makes one last mark, “I think I’ve got it. Oh. Wait,” she looks less like Snotlout when she frowns, wincing slightly and chewing on her lip, “you aren’t going to tell her or anything, right?” 

“It’s a surprise?” 

Smitelout nods, “kind of, I guess.” 

“Is that why you didn’t just ask to measure her other hand?” 

“What? And have her think I’m doing it to be nice or something?” Smitelout laughs. She blushes too, eye contact almost bruising, like she’s daring Astrid to mention it. “I’m totally charging her. It’s not a favor. Or—”

“Not a gift?” 

“No,” Smitelout shoves the leather strap into her pocket. “But still don’t tell her. I don’t even know if it’s going to work yet. I might have to rebalance her stupid axe anyway. But—”

“I won’t say anything.” Astrid waves her off, “you have a good night, Smitelout.” 

“Yeah, you too Mrs. H,” she nods, still red even as she starts back down the hill towards the village.

Astrid looks after her for a second and sighs. Maybe Arvid’s love life is the least complicated.


	23. Fuse Interrupted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuse POV. Takes place after Chapter 48.

“Dinner’s ready,” Fuse’s Mom announces as she walks inside and Fuse drops her dad’s arm, ignoring her older brother laughing at her. Her face is probably still red. She’s not even sure why, there’s too many reasons. Eret has an irritating way of making her feel everything at once until she can’t quite sort through it all without pausing. 

“I’m not hungry,” she steps over Chicken VI on the way to her room, pulling the curtain shut too fast behind her. 

“Why not?” Her mom asks as she flops on the bed, toeing her shoes off and pulling her pillow over her face. 

“Ask Dad.” 

She hears her Mom smack her dad in what sounds like the shoulder. 

“What’d you do?” 

“She had friends over, I had to go be cool.” Her dad says like it’s obvious. 

“Was Eret there, you idiot?” Her mom sighs and her brother laughs and she doesn’t know why she’d be embarrassed that they’re talking about it, but it feels private. Everything about Eret feels like it should be private but somehow, it never gets a chance to be. 

“The little one?” Her dad pulls out a chair, the legs squeaking across the floor and Chicken VI squawking as she jumps into his lap. “Yeah.” 

“Idiot,” her mom scoffs and her brother starts talking about something Fuse doesn’t care about and she tunes them out. 

That went…not how she expected it to. And that’s a bad thing, when it involves anyone but Eret. He’s the only one who manages to make her expectations better. She thought she’d get more done, yeah, but he couldn’t help his sister tagging along. And he couldn’t help the lie that Aurelia told and that lie led to a lot of his arm around her. 

But more than that, he did something no one has ever done and it got to her in the way he keeps getting to her. When he showed up, she was _full_. She was trying to teach two people to do things they’d never done before and that’s stressful, even more so when a mistake will blow the roof and all of them sky high. And she didn’t think it showed, it never does, she doesn’t let it. People get uncomfortable when they think the person handling explosives is nervous. But Eret was different, like he always is. 

He didn’t think about blowing up, he thought about her. He was worried about her. He tried to make her feel better even though she didn’t say she felt bad. 

She pulls the pillow off her face and back under her head, exhaling and staring at the ceiling. 

He keeps touching her. 

When she least expects it and before she realizes she needs it or even wants it. But he realizes it. He sees her and she should hate it but she doesn’t. She likes his hands on her shoulders and the way that he looks at her, even if she can’t quite figure it out. 

It’s not how she looks at him. She knows that much. 

He really doesn’t see himself, does he? He still sees how scrawny he was a year ago and even though she liked him then, it was more passive. She wished they could be friends because he seemed like someone who might be hers. He didn’t think she was weird, or maybe he was just as weird. She didn’t think about it too much, honestly, it was almost gravitational. She just felt compelled to check in on him and at some point she started looking forward to it. He was interesting. She couldn’t figure him out and maybe it’s because he hadn’t figured himself out yet. And unlike everyone else, he didn’t pretend that he had. 

Then his family fell apart and he started talking to her more and he started growing. And it’s not like he even grew all that much but he was around her all the time and maybe that’s why she noticed. Maybe the beard makes his shoulders look broader. Or maybe it just makes him look more touchable. Because as much as he keeps touching her, she can’t seem to touch him back enough. And he lets her, that’s not the problem. Maybe there isn’t a problem, it just feels like a problem because usually, when something makes Fuse as excited as the prospect of touching him does, the situation is a lot deadlier. 

And it’s not deadly with Eret. She trusts him. She trusts him more than she’s ever trusted anyone else. And he likes her. It took him a while to catch up but she believes him. He’s never lied to her. He has no reason to start now. 

And somehow, as hard as she tried not to, she built up expectations in her head those long months when he was around and distracting. It’s like imagining the explosion she’s trying to make before she can make the bomb to do it and now that he’s here and doesn’t mind, she keeps wanting to see how close her expectation was to reality. His back was warmer than she expected it to be, somehow, and she didn’t think touching it would make her want to put her hand in his hair quite so much. Maybe it’s because his hair always looks warm too or because when he pushes it out of his face, his arms flex and she wants to check those too. 

He’s not the first boy to ever kiss her. One of the Larson twins did when she was thirteen and she doesn’t even remember which because it left so small of an impact. But when Eret does, it’s like being almost close enough to a fire. 

Then he has to make comments about his magic fingers. Like she hadn’t been trying to focus while her brain was stuck on how large his hands were on her shoulders and how warm he felt behind her. And she trusts him and he wants to make her happy. He keeps proving it, he keeps complimenting her and holding her hand and touching her with that impenetrable, eye racing look like he might be thinking about the same things she is. 

Because he said he had a filter and at the time, she didn’t quite believe it. But the more she thought about it, the more that meant he was thinking things about her that he didn’t think he could say. And he makes her feel safe in a way that makes her want to search out something more dangerous. He stutters around her like he’s nervous and holding it together and it makes her want to blow it apart. 

And it’s his fault. He kisses her like he expects her to shove him off, he touches her so kindly and carefully that she can feel how strong he is and how much he’d never hurt her. 

She wants to kiss him until he relaxes. She wants who he is when he’s not thinking so hard to slow himself down. She wants him alone, like they never get to be. She wanted to push him against the door so that no one could get it open and interrupt them. 

And for the first time, what she wants isn’t just up to her. She’s always just been able to make it happen, one way or another. But this? Eret is important, it’s not his fault he’s busy. It’s not something she can blow up to get out of her way. She can’t remember the last time she worked around something instead of through. She doesn’t think she’s good at it. 

“Hey kiddo,” her dad says on the other side of the curtain in her doorway and she sighs, sitting up. 

“Come in.” 

“When exactly did you turn into a stereotypical teenager?” Her dad pulls the curtain aside enough to stick his head in. “And please tell me it’s temporary.” 

“When you became the dorky dad who mis-uses slang to embarrass me.” Fuse blinks at her dad until he laughs. 

“How the turns have tabled, I came in here to remind you that you’re too exceptional to feel embarrassed and you run me through.” He goes to pull the curtain back closed, “I made Darren save you some food but I don’t know how long it’ll last so…”

“I’ll eat,” Fuse stands up, grabbing her vest from where it’s crumpled on her shelf. It’s not like Eret is going to be around any time soon. The vest makes her feel like she’s got a bigger chance at solving this too. Maybe there is a way straight through. 


	24. Smitelout and Ingrid 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smitelout POV. Takes place during chapter 49.

Smitelout has a list of orders long enough to keep her busy until Snoggletog next year and that’s without finishing up the shells that Thorston still needs. It’s almost like running the forge is a full-time job and Eret obviously never did it himself or he wouldn’t be asking for so much charity. She pulls the dagger out of the fire and sets it on the edge of her anvil, pausing to pick up Ingrid’s axe and set it carefully to the side. It took hours to get that edge right again and it needed a brand new handle once she managed to scrub all of the dried blood out of the socket. 

It was a lot of blood. The kind of blood that stained the handle and left the wood bloated and cracking as it dried. The worst of it was by the head, but that old handle had a stain in the middle too. A stain around a deep, clean gouge in the wood. 

Smitelout starts pounding on the dagger, but her eyes keep flicking back to the axe, its new handle hardwood and shiny. It was practically a rebuild, it would have taken another full day if Smitelout had switched the balance the way Ingrid asked her to at first. It only took three or four late nights to get the other solution together, once she had the measurements. And that was a way more reasonable use of scrap metal than a bunch of bombs, anyway. 

“Fuck!” She swears when her hammer hits the tongs she’s holding the dagger with instead of the blade and it gets flipped into the air, stabbing into the ceiling joist and sticking there. “Gods dammit,” she jumps and reaches towards it, but of course, the ceiling has to be really fucking tall so she can’t reach it. 

“Need a hand?” Ingrid says from the window, because it has to be her and it has to be now and of course, Smitelout has to be jumping like an idiot. 

“You’ve got spares to offer people?” She blurts out, tugging at the hem of her tunic where it rode up from jumping. 

“That’s really original.” Ingrid leans on the window, raising an eyebrow. “You’re the one who told me to come pick up my axe, it’s not my fault you were goofing off when I had time to.” 

“You’re going to talk to me about time? I’m only keeping this whole forge going by myself and reviving mangled axes from the dead. I don’t have time to goof off.” Smitelout grabs the axe by the middle of its new handle, right where the old one was gouged. She hesitates for a second before grabbing the small leather bag next to it. 

Ingrid didn’t ask for it. She wanted the balance flipped. It might not even work, it’s not like Smitelout spends all her time on dinky little pet projects, she’s never made anything like it before. 

But Hel, it’s not like it’ll fit anyone else buying and she did spend all that time on it. Might as well let Ingrid see it. 

“I forgot, Eret always complained about the part of being Gobber’s apprentice where he had to jump up and down in an attempt to retrieve daggers he got stuck in the ceiling.” Ingrid raises one eyebrow in an infuriatingly artful, sarcastic expression and Smitelout sets down the axe before she uses it. Or drops it. Or decides to keep it because it is some of her best work and Ingrid isn’t appreciating it, already. 

“Here you go, back from the dead, you could be a little appreciative.” 

Ingrid looks down at it and freezes, expression falling entirely into something vulnerable that Smitelout hadn’t seen before prior to her getting back. It’s that damn face that did it, honestly, that apprehension she’d never had before. That’s the face that for some thor-forsaken reason, makes Smitelout feel like Ingrid is someone to protect. 

She wasn’t excited for Ingrid to get back. It was peaceful, the silent, uncontested winning. She got her job back and didn’t have to deal with the little shits at the academy. And she knew that would all change when Ingrid appeared over the horizon, triumphant as usual, just so much _better_ than everyone but mostly Smitelout herself. 

But then she was hurt. And it made her look smaller. And her little brother was treating her like she was going to shatter and Smitelout didn’t want that to be true. It couldn’t be true. And while before when she insulted Ingrid and had something thrown back in her face, it felt like losing. Like just another way Ingrid was faster or sharper than she was, but this time, when Ingrid snorted with a shadow of her old unflappable brush off, it felt like a return to the natural order of things. 

Except this time, Smitelout really wanted to kiss that dumb looking smirk off of her stupidly good-looking face. 

“It’s got a new handle.” Ingrid reaches out with her bandaged hand before catching herself and hiding it back under the other side of the counter. Her left hand is slow but sure as she wraps it around the handle and lifts the axe a couple of inches before her eyes dart back to Smitelout’s, cold and judgemental as Berk’s winter. “The balance isn’t flipped.” 

“I said that would be a bitch,” Smitelout exhales and reaches for the leather bag, pulling it open and dumping its contents onto the counter. “So here.” The metal fingers land stretched curled so that it’s not obvious what they are. 

“What’s that?” Ingrid gestures at it, unimpressed, her eyebrows a flat line. And Smitelout now likes that determined face that she always used to hate, and she hates that she can’t help but notice things she doesn’t want to notice. The fine blonde hairs in front of Ingrid’s ears and how they’re the only thing soft about her still too skinny jaw line. The way the bridge of her nose is golden instead of freckled, like everyone else’s is. 

Fuck, when did she become as unoriginal as Darren Thorston. Ingrid’s pretty but entirely intolerable, as a personality, who the fuck cares what she thinks about Smitelout’s dumb, experimental project? 

“Here,” she picks it up by the strap and unfolds the fingers so that it’s obvious what they are and which they are. “Try it on.” 

“It’s a…” Ingrid looks at her cautiously for a second before pulling her hand from where she’s hiding it under the table and holding it out between them. It’s shaking. “Help me try it on?” 

“What?” Smitelout looks at Ingrid’s hand for a second, the crisp white bandage against golden tan and Ingrid wants her to touch it? To touch her? 

“I don’t know how it fits, I didn’t make it,” Ingrid snaps, but it’s hollow. Impatient. The kind of tone that used to make Smitelout furious because as hard as she was always trying, Ingrid was furious at someone or something else instead of her. 

“Fine.” She stabilizes Ingrid’s hand with her fingertips against her palm and starts lining up the fingers with the lumps in the bandage underneath. Her skin is clammy and her pulse is racing in the heel of her hand and Smitelout hasn’t ever touched anything this hurt before. “Tell me if I hurt you, or whatever—”

“You’re not.” Ingrid grabs the strap that goes around her wrist and starts fastening it. “This goes here, right?” 

“Yeah, but after this one,” Smitelout flips over her hand and fastens the strap across her palm. “There, the wrist one goes now.” 

“Like that?” 

Smitelout nods but Ingrid doesn’t look up to see it. She stares at her hand, tentatively touching it with her other hand, bending one of the fingers and cocking her head when it ratchets through the first couple of settings. 

“It’ll hold its position,” Smitelout starts to explain, “I didn’t test it with an axe because—I mean, it doesn’t fit me, but it picked up my hammer—”

“You mean…” Ingrid looks at her for confirmation, cheeks pale and face oddly expressionless as she sets her bandaged palm against the axe handle and uses her other hand to wrap all three fingers around it. She picks up the axe and swings, slow and cautious, and her face splits into a blinding smile. 

Oh thank Thor she likes it. 

Smitelout didn’t know what she was going to do if Ingrid hated it. Or if it didn’t work. Not that it wouldn’t work because it’s not even a complicated mechanism and Smitelout knows what she’s doing. So of course it worked. 

“Hey, that’s enough playing with the merchandise before paying for it,” she cuts Ingrid off when she takes another couple swings, moving a little more forcefully. She steps into one last swing and her arms flex when she stops it right before the blade hits the counter. She’s still smiling and it’s kind of hard to look at without squinting. It’s actually kind of rude to just show up here looking like that and flexing those travel skinny arms all over the place until Smitelout wants to offer her some of the food she has stashed in the back room. “Ok, show off, let’s talk gold.” 

“Yeah, anything,” Ingrid pulls a bag off of her belt, dropping it on the counter and using her new finger to help pull it open. “How’d you get the fit so good?” She grins down at her hand and Smitelout swallows against the knot in her throat. 

She likes it. She actually, really likes it. 

“Your mom let me measure her hand.” Smitelout almost hates how pleased it makes her to see Ingrid almost stuck staring down at it, the fingers pressed flat against the table, because that means Ingrid is winning even now. Normally, the work isn’t worth it until the money is in her hand but right now she almost tells her to not worry about it. “It does fit though? Like—”

“Fits great,” Ingrid looks up at her for a second and she looks almost confused. “Why’d you do this?” 

“Because, like I said, if you’d listen for like a second,” Smitelout clears her throat, “flipping the balance on an already fucked up axe head is a pain—”

“Harder than this?” She looks at it almost reverently. “I’m not stupid.” 

“Uh, yeah you are.” 

Ingrid sighs and shakes her head, “thanks.” And there’s a warmth to her tone that Smitelout has never earned or wanted and it makes her remember Spitleaf, all of a sudden, even though she’s only seen the back of her head across the square since they’ve been back. 

Spitleaf didn’t make her a hand, she let her lose half of it. Presumably.

“How’d it happen?” Smitelout blurts out and Ingrid goes pale again, smile slowly deflating. “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want—”

“It was an ambush,” she looks small again, crossing her arms and making petulant eye contact. “Maybe twenty guys? I killed thirteen. Well, twelve, but number thirteen wasn’t going to last much longer from the way my axe lodged in his spine.” She shrugs a shoulder, “that’s where I messed up.” She sighs and looks at her hand again, “took a hammer to the back, knocked me down. And, you know, there were still seven.” 

Smitelout can read between those lines. Fuckers.

“Shit.” 

“Yeah,” she dumps her bag of money out onto the counter like she needs something to distract her so that breaking eye contact isn’t admitting defeat. “You know what? Just take it.” She pushes the whole pile over and Smitelout reaches out to stop her, hand on her good forearm. No, they’re both good, if arms can be good, which they can’t because that’s stupid and they’re Ingrid’s. Her arms are annoying. And stupid.

And she’s looking at Smitelout’s hand like she wants to smack it off and Smitelout wishes that she would. That would feel normal. 

“Like half of that should be enough,” Smitelout starts counting the money into two piles, “I used scrap leather. The rest went into a new saddle for Old Mr. Ack. So, your hand is twins with his ass.” 

Ingrid snorts, “that’s an image.” 

The dagger in the ceiling falls out, suddenly, smacking the anvil on the way down and cracking in half from being improperly tempered. Ingrid laughs, looking at Smitelout like they’re on the same side of a joke for once. Like she did when they got stuck hanging out with the twerps at Thorston’s house. And it was impossible then, because she wasn’t used to Ingrid looking at her without all the animosity protecting her from it. 

“I should fix that,” she steps back from the window, picking up the dagger and holding the two snapped ends against each other. “Or maybe just start over.” 

“I’ll leave you to it,” Ingrid scoops her money back into its pouch, swinging the axe over her shoulder and into the holster that looks dingy compared to the new, shiny handle. She pauses for a second like she has something else to say and Smitelout feels observed. She wants to tell Ingrid to fuck off. 

Ingrid holds up her new fingers and carefully ratchets the joints into their old enemies salute. 

“Oh fuck off,” Smitelout tosses the broken blade into a crucible to melt down, “that’s what I get for my generosity?” 

Ingrid laughs, “see you around, Smitelout.” 

“Like Hel you will, I’ve got so much to do I don’t think I’ll be out of here for weeks!” She shouts after Ingrid and gets another rude, metal gesticulation in return. It’s just the fire making her feel warm. It’s a forge. It’s fucking hot in here, of course she feels warm. And now she’s behind, because Ingrid can’t just pick up her axe, she has to stay and talk for fucking ever. Gods dammit. 


	25. Smitelout and Ingrid 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smitelout POV. Takes place during Chapter 52.

“Come on,” Aurelia points at Smitelout’s nightmare as everyone willing to help the Twerp out scatters around the village. “Give me a ride to my house, I bet your dad is there.” 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Smitelout jumps on her dragon anyway, reaching down to take Aurelia’s hand and yanking her up. She weighs all of ten pounds and her smack on Smitelout’s shoulder doesn’t hurt at all. 

“Do you have to be so rough?” 

“I thought you’d have to weigh more to support your big mouth,” Smitelout nudges her Nightmare upwards and Aurelia holds on tight enough to cut off circulation to her arms. Sure enough, Hookfang is in front of the chief’s house, waiting semi-patiently with Toothless and hissing when Smitelout lands. Aurelia cowers for a moment, smaller than she usually seems and Smitelout glares at Hookfang. “Cut it out you big baby.” 

“I bet they’re inside,” Aurelia says to save face, sliding off of Smitelout’s dragon and trotting towards the door. 

“No shit, Haddock,” Smitelout follows, pausing as Aurelia opens the front door to reveal the chief and Smitelout’s dad hunched over a map on the table. They both look up and Aurelia clears her throat, edging to the side of the door. 

“What do you two have to say for yourselves?” The chief asks, rolling his eyes and looking back down. Smitelout’s dad doesn’t look up at all and Hel, if he did, it’d be at Aurelia, because of course there’s no way that Smitelout could be behind this. There’s no way she volunteered for this and made it possible and kept it a secret for months. 

For the first time since her dad dragged her to a village meeting, clueless and half awake, Smitelout is pissed off. Before, she was proud to keep a secret, but now? Now her dad won’t even look at her like she’s an integral part of his problem. 

“A lot,” Aurelia nods, “I’ve got a lot to say if you have time to listen. Now.” 

“You’re in trouble when we get back,” the chief rolls up the map he’s looking at, “I’m not as nice as your brother is about treason.”

“You’re calling treason, Dad?” Aurelia clears her throat. “That must be really hard, do you want to talk about it—”

“I don’t have time for this right now,” the chief picks up a leather bag and Smitelout’s dad finally looks at her, furious but not letting her see it. 

Disappointed. He’s always so disappointed. She’d rather he was mad, she wants to yell and get it out of their systems but no, he’s quietly disappointed and frosty until he goes back to faking that everything is ok. 

And they need to keep their dads here, Aurelia probably doesn’t think that Smitelout gets the plan, because why would she? But the ships aren’t leaving without a Haddock and Jorgenson at the helm, so as long as their dads are here, the twerp is getting a head start. And Smitelout worked too hard on all those casings to have them wasted just because someone who wasn’t her can’t keep a secret. 

And if it doesn’t work, the promise of the twerp admitting he’s wrong is a decent second place. 

“Dad,” Smitelout steps in front of the door, staring down her dad until he keeps eye contact for a second. Furious and disappointed in all the wrong ratios. “You aren’t going to accuse me of anything?” 

“I—” he huffs, “I don’t have anything to say to you right now—”

“No!” Smitelout isn’t quite sure what she’s doing when she throws her arm up, leaning on one side of the door and blocking it fully even as the chief walks towards her.

“No, what?” Her dad glares at her and at least that’s real, at least that’s not just putting her off for later. 

“No, you’ve got to be fucking pissed at me right now. I kept this a secret, I’ve been planning to help Eret and Twerps blow up an island. I believed the crackpot about the dragons, I—you have to have something to say to me right now.” She stares at him. 

“You’ll…you’re in trouble when we get back.” He barely gets it out, like it’s a waste of time to even try and Smitelout almost forgets that they’re stalling on purpose through the sudden and hot embarrassment coursing through her. 

“Yeah?” 

“Big trouble.” 

“What’s that mean? Am I grounded? Are you going to yell at me?” 

“I’m not going to yell at you.” 

“Why?” She stomps her foot. Aurelia is staring at her like she wants to see where this goes and fuck, Smitelout does too. She’s never stood up to her dad like this and it feels awful. She wants a reaction, she wants him to react like she’s worth reacting to. “Why do you always have time for everyone else’s messes? Why are you helping the chief clean up Eret and Aurelia’s mess and it’s my mess too and you won’t even look at me?” 

“When we get back—” He starts through gritted teeth and she smacks her hand on the doorframe.

“No, now! You’re going to have time for me now because you never do. Because you’re willing to fly off anytime for anyone else but you won’t look me in the eye right now when this is important!” 

“Come on, Snotlout,” the chief starts walking towards the back door and Aurelia isn’t going to block him in time and Smitelout can see that her dad is going to follow. He’d leave this argument in the middle like it doesn’t even matter and maybe it doesn’t to him. 

“No, Dad, this is important!” Smitelout clears her throat against the unexpected sadness that tickles in her throat. Aurelia urges her on, edging around the table like she’s trying to slip to the door. The chief isn’t going to let her and Smitelout isn’t whining, she’s not being a baby or needy, she’s helping the dragons. “You need to yell at me, alright? You can’t just be silent until you think I forget whatever I did or whatever you did. That doesn’t fucking work for me, especially right now when I fucked up this bad.” She stutters, “Not that—it’s going to work and shit, and if it doesn’t—but from your point of view I fucked up bad, dad, I listened to Eret, of all people, and got in deep shit with Haddocks, like you didn’t teach me that was an awful idea—"

“Are you pregnant?” Smitelout’s dad blanches. 

“What?” Smitelout squawks, arm falling from the doorframe. 

That’d be funny if anyone but her dad was asking. Because she would have to have sex with someone to get pregnant and even that’s not a guarantee. Especially since she’s pretty sure she’s half in love with Ingrid Hofferson, because the Gods hate her and that’s the most obnoxious thing they could do to her. But as much as the cruel twist of fate is mostly just Ingrid winning again, like she always does, it also makes it pretty Odin-damned impossible for her to be pregnant. 

“You’re fucking pregnant, aren’t you?” He starts to raise his voice and Smitelout can’t help but be slightly gratified if a little stunned. All she had to do to get her dad’s attention was get fake pregnant, apparently. “How did this happen? Who did this?” 

“Uh…” Smitelout looks at Aurelia for help and she shrugs, gesturing in front of her and mouthing something like _say it_. 

That would stall them, but Smitelout doesn’t think it’d help anything. She wants her dad to be pissed at her for the right reasons. 

“I can’t believe you’re fucking pregnant,” Smitelout’s dad reaches for the war hammer on his back, “point me in the direction of the asshole who did this, honey, I will march them up to a marriage contract or kill them myself.” 

Her dad would kill for her. That’s—well, she doesn’t mind knowing that, even though this is kind of spinning out of control. 

The chief edges towards the door again, taking his maps with him, “If you need to stay back—”

“Trouble with the Haddocks?” Smitelout’s dad roars, like something is clicking together, “she listened to your son? It was Eret, wasn’t it?” 

“Leave my son out of whatever this is,” the chief takes a step back and Smitelout’s dad takes two forward, jabbing him in the chest. 

“This is your influence!”

“Smitelout,” Aurelia glares at her, her eyes freshly forged emerald daggers. 

“What?” 

“The bride price is the kid’s life, how about that?” Smitelout’s dad threatens and the chief is baffled like Smitelout has never seen. And as funny as it is, fuck, her dad is insinuating she marry Eret and that’s a horrible idea. 

She’d be Ingrid’s sister in law and that’s worse than being Ingrid’s nothing. And she’d have to be married to Eret. And Thorston would blow her up and Smitelout kind of thought they were bonding so that’d be even worse. 

“Is this true?” The chief asks Smitelout, looking back and forth between her pale silence and Aurelia frantically shaking her head. 

“No, Dad, it’s not true. Nope.” Aurelia laughs like she can make it go away if she acts like it’s not a big deal, “super not true. I don’t know where Snotlout got this idea. Not true.” 

“So, you just made this up?” Smitelout’s dad turns on her and he’s as angry as she’s always wanted him to get. And she feels guilty for lying to him, even if it was with her silence.

“Strictly speaking, Smitelout didn’t actually ever say it,” Aurelia says, “she just didn’t correct you, for some reason—”

“If you aren’t pregnant, what’s so fucking important that you had to make a big scene about it while I’m trying to clean up your mess?” Smitelout’s dad calls it her mess and the guilt builds on itself. 

She swallows hard. 

“Nothing. That’s what I thought,” her dad points at the back door, “come on, Hiccup, let’s go get these dragons.” 

They take a step and Aurelia opens her mouth to say something but Smitelout cuts across her, too loud. 

“I like girls!” 

Her dad stops and turns back around, face blank. 

“That’s—that’s the big secret I needed to tell you.” She clears her throat and tries to force all the thoughts she’s just been having since Ingrid came back into cohesive sentences. “I like girls, so I’m really sure I’m not pregnant, and that you’re going to be pissed that the Jorgenson line is going to end, and…and I needed to tell you the truth.” 

“Ok, I’m definitely going to give you two a minute,” the chief gestures at Aurelia, “come on, you can wait outside—”

“No!” Smitelout doesn’t hate the audience. More than that, she doesn’t hate how she’s managed to keep her dad here this long and framing it that way makes it more triumphant than embarrassing. “We were never close, even though you’re my second uncle or something, I don’t know, but we weren’t close because…because I thought if it ever came out, you wouldn’t accept me.” 

“Oh my gods,” Aureila mutters, sitting down at the table like she’s not sure it’s true yet. It could just be another lie, Smitelout could pay it off that way, she guesses. She had that embarrassing crush on Arvid for half a decade and is only now putting together that she liked the parts of him that were like his sister. 

Which is messed up, because it makes her wonder how long she liked Ingrid when she thought she hated her and this is a bad time to be thinking about all of this. 

“I’m sorry?” The chief looks over his shoulder but doesn’t move and Smitelout sees that as a win. 

“You should be. Because…because this whole time I felt like I couldn’t tell any of you.” Right, the whole couple months she’s known, but whatever. The chief looks uncomfortable. Her dad looks guilty and she hates that because she doesn’t want him to stop yelling and go back to making her wait for his opinion.

The back door bursts open and Thor personally assaults Smitelout’s spine with a well-forged lightning bolt because Ingrid runs inside, pale and flustered, her hair a mess around her face. And she looks scared and Smitelout hates it and she’s beautiful and it’s inconvenient and Smitelout’s stomach does a full flip and lands hard. 

“What are you still doing here?” She scowls at the chief, shoulders shaking as she points out the window at the bay. “They already left, you said you wouldn’t let anyone else get hurt.” 

“Oh, hey Ingrid, my daughter just flung us into an emotionally tense situation, we’ll be with you in a minute.” Smitelout’s dad says almost robotically and Ingrid scoffs, a little thrown off her feet. Confused Ingrid is like a spinning dagger, looking for where it’s going to dig in next and Smitelout’s chest clenches when it lands on her. 

“What’s the problem?” Her lip curls like it can hide her voice shaking and Smitelout hates this Ingrid, the trembling one that didn’t exist before she left. She hates how scared she looks. It makes her want to protect Ingrid, of all people, and she thinks about everything she’s just said. 

Oh, to Hel with it. 

“I like you,” she admits, at a normal volume this time. “I like girls and I like you. It’s you and—”

“Go,” Ingrid commands, pointing at the door, “go get my brother, chief, I’ll handle this.” 

“What’s that mean?” Smitelout’s dad asks her, like he still cares, and the chief shakes his head. 

“Come on, Snotlout, we—we’ve wasted enough time.” The chief leads Smitelout’s dad out and Aurelia stands up. 

“Ingrid, I know you don’t understand, but you have to believe us,” she launches into something similar to Eret’s convincing diatribe and Ingrid holds up her left hand to stop her. Smitelout doesn’t expect it to work, but it does and Aurelia swallows. 

“Do you think I give a shit that you like me?” Ingrid doesn’t leave room for Smitelout to answer. “Do you think that tops my list of worries right now? Hel, do you think that breaks the top ten?” Her voice wavers and she clenches her fists, almost habitually curling in those metal fingers with her left hand. “My little brothers are out there and you helped them, apparently, you’re helping stall someone who might rescue them if things go wrong and things…” she exhales a long, shuddering breath, gray eyes unreadable, “things always go wrong.” 

“He’ll be ok,” Aurelia tries and Ingrid holds up her hand again, narrowing her eyes at Smitelout. 

“In the middle of all of that, you think I’d give a shit about your feelings? Or you? Or…if anything happens to them,” her voice drops to a dangerous, almost teary growl, “how am I going to live with myself?” 

Smitelout’s hand reaches for Ingrid’s without her explicit permission and Ingrid yanks it back. 

“Sorry—”

“I don’t care about your sorry.” She scoffs, turning on her heel and stalking back outside, slamming the door behind her.

Aurelia clears her throat, offering Smitelout a completely uncommon and noticeably unpracticed version of a kind smile. Pity. That’s the last thing she wanted.

“You ok?” 

“Let’s go fuck up a boat or something,” Smitelout waves Aurelia after her. It’s not like there’s any going back, might as well keep fucking up.


	26. Smitelout and Ingrid 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ingrid POV. Takes place between Chapter 55 and Chapter 56.

Eret offers to fix Ingrid’s hand about three days after he wakes up, the kind of cavalier offer for help he keeps throwing out there to remind himself that he’s not in bed forever. It should be cheapened by the fact that he’s drunk and his head is on a sleeping Fuse’s lap, but Ingrid can’t help but be offended. Smitelout made her this hand and now she has to fix it, clearly. 

But that means Ingrid going to the forge and asking her to and that’s not something she wants to do. 

It’s not her problem that Smitelout suddenly likes her. That’s not something she has to deal with. She doesn’t have room for it and even if she did, she’s not sure why she should care. It’s Smitelout. Smitelout who has thrown a million petty little tantrums about losing to her. Smitelout who threatened to spread rumors about Eret’s real dad. 

Smitelout who treats Ingrid like she did before she left. Smitelout who makes Ingrid a new hand without even being asked. 

Ingrid still appreciates it even if it’s bent now. She didn’t bend on purpose or anything, it honestly surprised her when the healer was trying to set Eret’s arm and he resisted with that much force. And her fingers fit well enough that she just didn’t think about it, she braced him as well as she could and noticed after that they were bent out of shape. 

She lives with it for a while. It’s hard to hold her axe but no one points it out until Aurelia is watching her attempt to hit the target in the chief’s front yard. The first two throws clip the side but the third misses entirely and Aurelia narrows those chiefly but less irritating eyes and pauses, bag of tightly rolled scrolls on her hip. 

“What?” Ingrid collects her axe, holstering it and adjusting her fingers back to neutral. They still ratchet but not as well, the bend in the first digit making everything in them harder to move. 

“Nothing,” Aurelia shifts the weight of the scrolls onto her slim hip and when she cocks her eyebrow, she looks so much like Eret a year ago that Ingrid can’t help but feel like she should listen. “Just that’s not really Hofferson aim.” 

“I just lost half my hand, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” Aurelia shrugs, “it seems like the new one was working out for you pretty well before it got bent.” 

“It’s a grip thing,” Ingrid clears her throat and she knows that a glare won’t help her. Aurelia wouldn’t be so comfortable with the rest of the family if glaring did anything. 

“You know, I’m sure Smitelout could fix those.” 

“What?” Ingrid hides her fingers behind her and Aurelia shrugs. 

“She made them, I bet she could fix them.” 

Aurelia was there. She heard all of that. Not that it should matter, because Ingrid doesn’t care, but it makes her feel like she needs to try. Like this stupid situation is something she needs to fix, like all the others were. A Jorgenson telling a Hofferson something like that with no answer is reason for issue. 

Or it was, back in the world before Eret was next in line for chief. Ingrid isn’t quite sure how all of that works but she’s sure, at some level, that it’s ultimately in her favor. 

“Like I have money for that,” Ingrid rolls her eyes and Aurelia contests Eret’s best deadpan with far less effort. 

“Right. That’s the problem. It’s not that you don’t want to talk to her.” 

“Why wouldn’t I want to talk to her?” Ingrid reaches for her axe to make an argument ending perfect yak’s eye before realizing it’s not guaranteed anymore and pausing. 

“I don’t know,” Aurelia shrugs, “I’m just thinking about how many weapons you have that need sharpening occasionally. And if Eret isn’t working in the forge anymore, are you planning to leave Berk to get that done—”

“No,” Ingrid scowls. “You were there, do you think I could just walk in and ask Smitelout to do something for me?” 

Ingrid hates the idea that she could. That Smitelout might do it just because she likes her, and that’s fake too. If Smitelout really does like girls and she hasn’t minced words before so why would she start now? And that means that Ingrid is the only option Smitelout has ever known, aside from Spitleaf. And Spitleaf never had the same problems that Ingrid did with the forceful proposals. Her face isn’t so loud and people aren’t so presumptive. 

“I don’t know,” Aurelia shrugs and for a moment, Ingrid sees how pretty she is and how firmly she guards it. It makes Ingrid jealous, suddenly, because her looks are still causing problems for her and she doesn’t know how to stop them. But with Aurelia, it’s all words and no bite and somehow it works. “Have you tried?” 

“My hand is fine,” Ingrid lies and Aurelia knows it just how Eret always used to. It’s irritating, she really didn’t need another Eret running around, especially one who seems to need less advice. 

“Yeah, I can see that.” She rolls her eyes and Ingrid tries not to seethe. 

Before her fingers bent, they were almost as good as the real thing as far as her axe was concerned. A good solid throw was a single ratchet and it happened perfectly halfway through the swing, just in time for the axe to release at the right angle. It felt alright if not perfect and that’s all she can ask for. Except she didn’t ask for it, Smitelout just decided to give it to her. 

It was nice before Ingrid learned why. It kind of felt like maybe they could be friends or at least consistent rivals, the way they used to be. But now she knows that Smitelout wants something from her.

“It’s just bent.” Ingrid ratchets her fingers, acting like it’s not difficult and Aurelia blinks. 

“Just a suggestion,” she rolls her eyes before starting down the hill without finishing the argument, like she knows she won without dealing the final blow, and Ingrid can’t say she’s currently overjoyed with having a new sister. 

She knew it was an inevitability, what with having so many brothers, and Rolf’s wife is great but also more attached to Spitleaf than Ingrid wants to be. And it’s complicated, like everything is. But mostly, Aurelia is annoying and pushing her when she doesn’t want to be pushed. And that’s new too, she’s never had pressure feel so oppressive. It always felt like something to push back against, people who doubted her were just waiting to be proven wrong. 

Now everything is a little more daunting and she’s lost her taste for being daunted. 

What if Smitelout says no? Does she suddenly have to leave the island to get anything sharpened? 

That scares her. She’s not doing that. Fuck that. 

“Ugh, fine,” she stalks down the hill after Aurelia, turning before she sees the long red braid and almost jogging towards the forge, because might as well get this over with. It’s not like she’s going to fly off island to get her axe sharpened, that’s a fair point, she has to work this out at some level or she’ll be defenseless. 

The forge is quiet and Smitelout is pounding away at some red hot hunk of metal on the other side of the window. Ingrid doesn’t let herself pause, she doesn’t let herself feel fourteen and confused and lonely and see Smitelout as safe, because at least she’s predictable. She doesn’t let herself see Smitelout’s arms, sweat slicked and intentional, or her hands, comfortable around her hammer. 

She doesn’t take the hammer as a potential weapon and she doesn’t think of a thousand ways to stop an attack. She definitely doesn’t notice the way that Smitelout’s concentration looks more like avoidance, like she knew Ingrid was coming and didn’t want her to. 

“Hey,” Ingrid starts, trying to be neutral and Smitelout fumbles and drops her hammer on the floor. It’d be funny if Smitelout didn’t like her. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Ingrid tosses her braid over her shoulder, “just wanted to ask if you could fix my fingers but if you’re busy…”

“What needs fixed?” Smitelout doesn’t make eye contact but she moves purposefully, wiping off the counter with a wet, smudged rag. 

“They got bent.” Ingrid avoids the eye contact that Smitelout attempts to make. 

“So explanatory,” Smitelout rolls her eyes, “I need to see the actual damage to fix it.” 

“Here.” Ingrid unstraps her fingers and throws them on the counter, wincing at the thunk of gronckle iron on wood. She didn’t mean to hurt them more. Hel, she didn’t mean to hurt them in the first place. 

Smitelout picks it up, ratchets the joints that she made and sighs. 

“What’d you do to it?” She glares, heavy eyebrows low over those hostile blue eyes. That look has always pissed Ingrid off and that’s no different now, except for the fact that she’s still preoccupied with the fact that Smitelout likes her. 

Why?

She knows why, rationally. It’s always because she looks how she does. It’s because she’s this perfect Viking wife. Except Smitelout can’t be concerned about her line or the heirs Ingrid would make and there’s no carrot of redeeming the Hoffersons through marriage to dangle in front of her. Smitelout can’t have thought that admitting it like that would go well. But she still did it and it doesn’t make sense and Ingrid has no room right now for things that don’t make sense. 

“I held Eret down while the healers were setting his arm,” Ingrid shrugs, “he’s stronger than he looks. Don’t tell him, because I can’t take his ego getting bigger than it is but…” She trails off. Smitelout looks between her and her fingers, frowning. 

“Why would I tell him?” Smitelout picks up the fingers, quickly diassembling the rivets that hold leather to metal and moving it to her anvil, like she’s actually going to fix it. 

“I don’t know,” Ingrid crosses her arms, her bad hand folded under her good arm so that no one looks at it. Smitelout doesn’t even try and that’s worse. “You might think it’s funny that he can gloat, or something.”

“He’s pretty hurt, isn’t he?” Smitelout starts taking apart the fingers, treating each part with delicate care that makes Ingrid feel not only guilty but ungrateful. “Yeah.” 

“Is he…” Smitelout looks up at her and then back down, sorting the parts of her fingers into two piles, presumably damaged and undamaged. Not that Ingrid cares. She just wants them fixed. “Is he going to be ok? Or…” 

“He’s going to be fine.” Ingrid sighs and she doesn’t remember the fight leaking out of her this quickly. The longer she tries to work this out, the less tainted the gift seems. Smitelout started in on insulting her the second her feet touched Berkian soil. Hel, she charged Ingrid for the hand in the first place. “Scarred up, but fine.” 

“He looked pretty fucked up.” 

“Yeah.” Ingrid leans her elbow on the window and looks across the square. 

Smitelout rustles with the parts on the counter for a second before pausing, her voice rising in pitch and volume when she does speak again. 

“Is it because of what I said?” She squawks, kind of like a baby terror and Ingrid looks at her slowly, cocking her head. 

“What?” 

“Are you acting weird because of what I said?” She clears her throat, slumping her shoulders forward and looking anywhere but at Ingrid. “About the liking you, or whatever. Is that why you’re being weird?” 

“I’m not being weird.”

“You’re kind of being weird,” Smitelout snorts.

“I’m not.” 

“You—”

“It wasn’t the time to do that,” Ingrid snaps, slamming her good hand on the counter like punctuation. Smitelout doesn’t flinch. “I don’t care that you like me. I’m just here to get my hand fixed—”

“After you broke it.” 

“After I bent it.” 

“It’s pretty fucked up,” Smitelout holds up one of the finger joint pieces, running her finger along the pale seam where the metal bent. “Like, this used to be flat.” 

“I told you, Eret’s stronger than he looks.” 

“So are you,” she scoffs, “this took a lot of force from both ends. I can fix it, but it’s going to take a couple of days, I might have to re-forge a couple of parts.” 

Ingrid doesn’t feel strong, not anymore, and the sideways remark resonates as a compliment in a way she doesn’t like. It feels like it might matter more because Smitelout likes her, and that’s absurd, because she really doesn’t care. 

“How much?” Ingrid tries to bluff and Smitelout hems and haws, inspecting a couple more pieces with squinted eyes. Her face is sharper than it was when Ingrid left. Not lighter, but more purposeful. It’s not a face that can hide things and more importantly, Smitelout has never been tactful. Hel, any bartering she’s planning to try is already undermined by the way that she’s blushing. Ingrid wouldn’t have taken her for someone who blushes, honestly, she never seemed to get embarrassed about anything else. And in Ingrid’s mind, at least, throwing a tantrum about losing Thawfest is a lot more embarrassing than liking someone. 

Ingrid catches herself staring and looks away. Smitelout doesn’t comment, for some reason, even though she’s never let Ingrid get away with anything, ever. She’s the one acting weird. 

“I’ve got some scrap from making…the bombs,” Smitelout stutters through it, “it’s not good metal but this is just a draft, obviously, if you and Eret can fuck it up this bad. I’ll do it for free with shit materials but you’ll have to pay for the next try.” 

“Fine.” 

“Really?” Smitelout’s voice cracks again and Ingrid tries not to care that she’s nervous. Even so, it’s a weird thrill to make someone nervous even with her hand off and taken expertly apart in front of her. It makes Ingrid feel significant in a way she’s been missing ever since Haddocks started talking over her all the time. “I mean, it’s a deal, you should take it.” 

“I already did,” Ingrid stands up, debating for a moment before leaving her bad hand out of her pocket, “that’s fair. When can I pick it up?” 

“I’ll let you know,” Smitelout shrugs, “depends on how busy I get, it’s been pretty busy with kid saddles since the dragons came back. But I’ll get to it as soon as I can.” 

“Don’t rush it for me,” Ingrid clears her throat. “I just mean—”

“I’m not going to make it weird,” she tosses the pile of good parts into a leather bag and sets it on the shelf beneath the counter. “I get it, I—”

“Ok.” Ingrid shrugs. 

“Ok what?” 

“You don’t get it,” she bites her lip and sighs, “but you won’t make it weird. That’s good, considering this is the only forge on Berk.” That’s too harsh and Ingrid sighs, “I don’t know what weird is. Everything is weird. I came back to a different Thor-damned island. You overcharging me for repairs is about the only thing that feels normal.” 

Smitelout is quiet for a moment and it’s almost comfortable. 

“This one’s free, Hofferson, in what world am I overcharging you? You’re just looking for something to complain about.” 

Ingrid can’t quantify her relief and she doesn’t try, standing away from the counter and shaking her head at a very red Smitelout. 

“Let me know when I can pick up the hand.” 

“Fine,” Smitelout huffs, “don’t expect me to rush on it or anything though. It’s a free job—”

“I get it,” Ingrid takes a couple of backwards steps, heels dragging across hard packed dirt, “you know where to find me.” 

“Fine, give me more work, now I have to come get you when it’s done,” Smitelout rolls her eyes even though she basically volunteered for it and if she’s putting on a show to make Ingrid feel better, it’s not exactly failing. 

“I’ll come pick it up, you just have to let me know when.” 

“Whatever,” Smitelout shrugs, picking her hammer up off of the floor and twirling it absentmindedly. “Are we done here?” 

“Sure.” Ingrid rolls her eyes, “I’ll get out of your hair.” 

Smitelout waves her off and Ingrid pauses another second before turning back towards the chief’s house. She’s not entirely sure what just happened. Smitelout likes her, it’s obvious and she didn’t take it back, but she didn’t shove it forward either. She didn’t expect Ingrid to do anything about it, at least. Maybe that’s ok, maybe it can just exist and Ingrid doesn’t have to do anything about it right now. Maybe it can just hold steady for a while and Ingrid will deal with it when she’s ready to. 

For the first time, everyone’s constant advice that she doesn’t have to take everything on at once makes sense. This can wait. 


	27. Fuse and Eret 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuse POV. Takes place between Chapter 55 and 56.

Eret’s mom pulls the cut stitches from his head one by one, biting her lip and stilling her shaking hand against her lap between each tug. Fuse can’t feel her fingers above Eret’s grip but she barely notices, her own breath shaking in her chest as each pull of thread reveals more of a bright pink scar. 

Fuse knows his other injuries were worse, but this one scared her the most. 

“Almost done,” his mom pats his shoulder and he rolls his eyes, looking at Fuse to agree with him even as he winces. When she first heard he was unconscious, she wondered if he’d wake up and if he did, if he’d be the same. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” he flinches away from the tweezers as they grab the last stitch. “I just forgot how much…sensation there was when my skin holds itself together.” 

“Right,” his mom’s sigh shudders and Fuse knows how it feels to hate hurting him. “Well, let me know if it gets any worse.” She gets up and looks between them, a sad sort of awkward that makes her look more like Eret than usual as she edges towards the door. 

“Yeah, you can get me drunker, I know,” he mutters as his mom disappears from the doorway,rolling his eyes and loosening his grip on Fuse’s hand all at once, like he just realized how tight he was holding on. She almost misses it. “Sorry, you should have said something—”

“It’s fine,” she stretches her fingers, “does getting stitches out hurt?” 

“Not really,” he lies, shifting against the bandages still around his ribs with a wince, “how bad is it?”

He’s still so hurt. His eyes are brighter than they have been and he looks further from death without that black string woven through his temple but the purple and green smudges over his ribs make her think of fire and pressure and how close she came to losing him. 

“What part of it?” 

“Oh,” he deflates, “I was…uh, the facial scar in particular, I guess.” He lets go of her hand to touch it, his fingertips brushing the angry skin. “Is it—I mean, should I break all the mirrors in the house the next time I get stir crazy?”

“That would be a gigantic mess,” Fuse shakes her head, looking at the scar again and trying to see anything but Eret quiet and battered and still. “It—it looks like a scar.”

That’s not the answer he’s looking for and he frowns, the expression tugging at the scar. Fuse hates seeing him disappointed and she leans forward, pressing her lips gently against the scar and the fingers still touching it. 

He brushes her cheek, smiling slightly at her when she sits back down. 

“Does that feel better?” She tries to see the scar as a place where he knit back together even though she’s only good at the opposite. 

“Immediately,” he smiles, “I’ll remember that when these come out next week.” He gestures to the line of stitches across his collarbone and she swallows hard. 

“I meant—it doesn’t look bad.” 

“It feels better too,” he stands up and tries to pull her to her feet, like he’s not the one who needs help, “thanks.” 


	28. Fuse and Eret 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuse POV. Takes place between Chapters 55 and 56.

Fuse knew Eret through what had to be the most complicated year of his life, but that doesn’t mean she knows everything about him. It’s not that she presumed to, even, but she learns a lot in the first three weeks after what illogically feels like his resurrection.

He’s more stubborn than she understands, especially because it makes things more difficult for him a majority of the time. He’s determined to be upright, no matter how much it hurts and no matter how much everyone wants him to lay down. Before he jumped, Fuse always knew him as someone who collapsed to sit at the last possible instant, but she never realized how exaggerated it was until he insisted on staying awake as much as possible, even though he’s so hurt it hurts to look at him. Fuse doesn’t understand that either but when his mom pulled the healed stitches out of his shoulder and temple, her stomach hurt like she was the one who’d been sliced open. 

Most of all though, he’s clingy. Clingy in a sweet, unavoidable, flattering way. And every time she enters the room that Eret is in, it’s obvious and immediate in a way she doesn’t know how to deal with. He’s all drunk, gentle hugs and big blue eyes and beseeching requests that she stay and get closer and she gets used to sleeping on the edge of the bed, his hand intertwined with hers and his head tilted into her shoulder.

But it’s Eret, and he’s strong and stubborn and insistent and before three weeks have passed he’s on his feet and answering the door when Fuse knocks. She blinks at him and then at his chest, because instead of the crisp, white bandages she’s gotten so used to, the fireworm shaped scars across his ribs are exposed and his bandaged arm is hanging in a loose sling that looks way more comfortable than what he had before.

“Thank Thor you’re here,” he grabs her hand and starts dragging her inside, the lone fireworm scar on his arm flexing when his elbow bends. They’re red but definitely healed, the edges of them crisp against pale skin that’s losing its freckles the longer he’s stuck inside. “I’m so bored.”

“You got your bandages off,” Fuse states the obvious, looking down at his chest again and trying to get used to it. Of course pulling a shirt over his broken arm is too much effort, considering it’s summer and he’s not going anywhere. He was shy about it at first and until yesterday, bandaged enough that there wasn’t really anything exposed except collarbones and pale, ointment covered stomach.

Even with his arm in a sling, there’s more to look at now.

“Yes, and he’s obsessed with his new scars,” Aurelia says out of nowhere, startling Fuse enough that she looks away from Eret. “I’ve got to go check on Stoick, apparently he was being a show off at dragon training yesterday. You got him?” She points at Eret, who rests his forehead on Fuse’s shoulder, his hair tickling her jaw.

“You could tell him to bring Bang back,” his breath still has an edge of mead to it but he seems clearer than he has.

“Why?” Aurelia pauses in the doorway, “you aren’t flying until your ribs are healed. Healer’s orders.”

“Mom paid them off to say that,” he huffs, standing back up straight and glaring outside.

“They still said it.” Aurelia shrugs, “see you guys later.” She shuts the door and Eret groans, staring up at the ceiling for a second before looking back at Fuse.

“I’m not obsessed with my scars,” he clarifies, like that matters, and all it does is make Fuse look back down at them. She reaches out and touches one without thinking, her thumb tracing the warm edge, against his rib and he hisses.

“Sorry–” She jerks her hand back and he catches her wrist.

“No, it’s fine, it just–they kind of feel funny, I guess, and I think the ointment made my skin sensitive or something.” He laughs, shifting his sling to the side and looking down at himself. “They are kind of cool though, right?”

She looks up at the crescent of barely healed dragon tooth marks around his shoulder, each ringed with a yellowing bruise, and at the line across his collarbone and its twin on his temple.

“I don’t like you being hurt.” Her voice seems too small under the high ceiling and Eret takes her hand, gently placing it flat against the scars and pressing it to his skin.

“They don’t hurt anymore.” He’s smiling at her and she keeps waiting to get used to the warmth in her chest and the way her heart stutters, but maybe it’s not something she can get used to because she feels herself flush. “Turns out whatever Rolf said about Fireworm mucus or whatever is actually probably true, they healed faster than my other burns.” He frowns and moves his hand from the back of hers to her upper arm, rubbing lightly. “Not that I’m happy about mucus, because that’s weird.”

She can feel his heartbeat in her palm and the unscarred skin under her fingertips is smooth and warm over his ribs. It takes self control she hasn’t been using much lately to pull her hand away, especially because Eret starts playing with the end of her braid, his finally focused eyes drifting over her face.

“If it helped you heal faster, I’m happy about it.”

“But it’s mucus,” he shudders, rolling his shoulder and wincing when it nudges his ribs. He blinks against the pain and shuffles closer to her, bare foot nudging the toe of her boot. The lack of boundaries that was endearing when he was nearly incoherent is different now that he’s upright and making sense. “Which I’m still talking about for some reason. Mucus. Blech. I’m going crazy in here,” he tucksher hair behind her ear and looking out the window, fingertips lingering against the side of her neck. “And it’s such a nice day,” he pouts, jutting his lower lip out and looking at her meaningfully, his hand sliding down to her shoulder.

“What?” She swallows, glancing at his lips. He’s still hurt, even if he’s doing better. And he’s stubborn and in pain and refusing to admit it. And the idea of kissing it better is absurd, and not based in logic, and he just keeps asking because he wants to kiss her. It wouldn’t actually make him feel better.

“Can we go outside?” He sighs like she missed something obvious and his lips quirk into that uneven smile he got in the habit of when the bruise on his jaw was still black and blue instead of the nearly faded yellow it is now. “Please? It’s not like I’ll explode if I set foot across the threshold,” he gestures at the door and she misses his hand on her shoulder as the guilt she can’t seem to shake swirls in her stomach. She crosses her arms and takes a step back.

“You’re just asking me because you think I’ll let you.”

“I’m asking you because you’re logical,” he reaches for her waist and pulls her back closer to him. He bats his eyelashes like it’s a joke and Fuse can’t figure out what part of this is supposed to be funny. “And pretty.”

None of it is funny. Not the way he’s looking at her or the fact that he can bring up blowing up so casually. Or his bare chest covered in scars reminding her that he came so close to not being here at all. Or his gentle hand on her waist and the way that he keeps touching her while looking a lot less hurt than she knows he actually is.

Everything about him makes her want to act before thinking about it.

“Who told you that you couldn’t go outside?” She forces her full attention back to his face and that doesn’t really help anything. Oddly, he’s better rested while healing and there are no dark circles under his eyes to distract from that focused blue. It’s darker around his pupil and maybe that’s why he can seem so intense even while he’s goofing off.

“That’s the thing,” he lowers his voice like it’s a secret, “no one has explicitly told me not to go outside, they’re all just very adamant that I stay right here. So, to go outside and get some sun on my pasty, pasty face is only violating the spirit of the thing.”

Fuse purses her lips and swallows, glancing down at his sling and the scattered deep red scars and the way that they almost match the strip of red hair leading down from his belly-button. And it’s quiet and the weight of her vest doesn’t remind her to move slowly or carefully, because the roof isn’t going anywhere.

So maybe they should.

“Fine.” She steps away with a full chest exhale and opens the door, squinting at the suddenly harsh light.

“That was easier than I thought,” Eret walks past her, holding his good hand up to block the light. The bruises on his back stand out against the pale glow of his skin and that sends another pang through Fuse’s chest, because those have to still hurt. Either he’s pretending they don’t or everything has hurt so bad it warped his perspective. “And see?” He turns and grins at her, looking down at his arm, “no spontaneous combustion.” 

“That’s not funny.” It comes out more harshly than she intended but she doesn’t want to take it back either, even when Eret’s smile fades and he cocks his head at her, corners of his mouth downturned. 

It was hard to be mad at him after Snoggletog. It’s harder now, because he’s hurt and she was more scared than she was mad, anyway, but the fear is fading faster than the anger. 

“Fuse,” he says her name gently, like he’s the one comforting her, and she feels as bad for bringing it up as he should for making her. 

“No, it’s not funny. You shouldn’t make jokes about blowing up.” She clears her throat because seeing all those scars in the sunlight makes them look like they’re still burning. “Because you almost did.”

“But I didn’t,” he reaches for her hand and folds their fingers together, because his first instinct when either of them is upset is to touch her and she wouldn’t have known that if he’d…blown up.

“You did your best.” She pulls her hand away and crosses her arms, like he won’t read her quite as well if he’s not touching her. That doesn’t make sense, but he started answering questions she hadn’t asked yet right around the time he started touching her at every opportunity. And it is Eret. Logic and science haven’t ever applied to him the same as they do to everyone else.

“Look, I get—that was bad phrasing,” his hand flails by his hip for a second like he’s not sure what to do with it if she’s not letting him hold hers, and that piles onto the guilt in her stomach like a glaze that’s meant to set and hold. “I won’t say it again,” he snorts to himself, that little half laugh that means he thought of something funny at an unexpected moment. Usually, she wants to hear what it is, but when he opens his mouth to keep talking, her stomach drops again, “Odin knows if I actually wanted to get blown up, all I’d have to do is piss you off. Which I’ve done,” he blanches, reaching halfway for her hand before stopping himself, “I’m sorry.”

She knows he’s not being literal. She knows that.

But she also knows she hasn’t been able to think about lighting anything up without imagining him in the way of it. She hasn’t thought about getting a new knife in case it leads him to something else as dangerous as the first one did.

And somehow, he’s going to be ok. In spite of her, not because of her. She came to terms with the fact that accidents don’t matter with explosives years ago, the first time she took off an eyebrow because her hands were shaking. But until Eret was dumb and brave and determined enough to jump straight into the path of her biggest explosion yet, it was only ever her risk.

And her risk was always calculated and rewarded and worth it. His wasn’t. Isn’t. 

How could he ever trust someone who blew him up? Why does that feel like something she can’t ask him? 

Part of her thinks it’s the first time since he was clueless about the chief that she’s ahead of him on something. She’s thought of an angle that he hasn’t and she really doesn’t want him to catch up. 

“You really scared us,” she clears her throat, looking back up at him and sighing at the way he’s standing, like it’s difficult for him to give her space but he’s trying. It makes her giddy and furious and guilty and she feels like one of the bombs she isn’t making right now, all powerful feelings mixed in unknown proportions, liable to explode. “You really scared me. I thought…I thought you were gone.” 

“I guess I wasn’t there for that part,” he frowns, looking at his feet, and she puts two fingers under his chin, lifting it until he looks at her, eyes sheepish. She’s happy that he’s listening and guilty that she brought it up and the two mix with the anxious flutter in her chest when he bites his lip and exhales. Something about Eret makes it impossible to keep things separate. It’s like all the walls inside of her turn to mesh and the space in her own head without boundaries almost scares her. “I…my family used to think I was so fragile that they wouldn’t tell me the truth about anything. I didn’t–I mean, I still don’t want them to start thinking that again. I can’t…I don’t think I can convince them again, you know, it was really painful the first time and…” he waves his hand around like it can speak for him and she takes her fingers off of his chin, catching his flailing fingers in hers. 

He squeezes her hand and looks relieved and it makes her want to say something. She doesn’t understand it yet, but the more he talks to her just for the sake of talking, the more she feels like she should say things to him. She doesn’t know what she’d say, honestly, because everything in her head is dark and sad and muddled but he’s looking at her like he wants her to say something encouraging. Or do something, maybe. 

And he’s hurt. But he’s vertical. And mapped out with scars and ribs and muscles as landmarks and looking at him is almost as confusing as touching him. 

“You’re not fragile,” she tries and his eyes light up like he’s been waiting to hear it. And he expects her to keep talking, because that’s the only reason he wouldn’t start talking himself. 

A silent Eret isn’t really something she should waste, especially when he’s also upright and mostly sober, so she leans up onto her toes and kisses him. He makes a surprised, muffled sound against her lips and she leans into him, placing the hand he isn’t holding on his chest, her thumb against one of those new smooth scars. 

They’re warmer than the skin around them, almost as warm as Eret’s lips moving sweetly against hers and he’s so alive and himself that she can’t stop worrying about him. She’s scared he’s going to go do something like that again and she wants to give him a reason to stay. He’s got enough scars, he doesn’t need any more of them. She slips her tongue into his mouth and must lean against his arm too much because he grunts, pulling back slightly. 

“Sorry,” she drops her hand from his chest too quickly and jostles his sling. He winces again and her palm tingles where it’s not touching him anymore. 

“No, don’t be. What was that for?” He tries and fails not to smile, his joking tone warmer than usual. “Because I want to be sure to repeat whatever I did to make you kiss me like that.” 

Her heart thuds and she shakes her head. 

“You don’t have to do anything.” Especially not repeat anything that makes her remember how miraculous it is that he’s still here with her. “Just keep getting better.” 

He grins and raises an eyebrow, “is it the scars?” 

“No,” she frowns, her face heating up when he narrows his eyes at her like he’s got her all figured out. She looks down at his chest again and shrugs, shoving the urge to touch him again down and pressing her free palm against the side of her leg. “I’m just glad you got the bandages off.” 

“Me too,” he’s authentic and then nervous, his hand stiffening in hers, “oh. I–I mean, I don’t know how I’d get on a shirt over my arm, so I just didn’t.” He shrugs and winces, the motion pulling on his ribs. 

“It’s fine,” Fuse looks at his shoulders, the pale freckles asserting themselves already after only a few minutes in the sun. 

“Gods, Eret,” Arvid appears out of seemingly nowhere, Wingspark walking behind him with her scaly head hung low. “There should be a warning, I tried to fly over and your pasty chest practically blinded Wing.” 

“No, it didn’t,” Eret drops Fuse’s hand and tries to cover himself, squirming for a moment before giving up and slouching. 

“She’s traumatized.” Arvid scratches Wingspark’s chin and gives Fuse a lukewarm nod in greeting. 

“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be working with Dad?” Eret shuffles halfway behind Fuse, like he’s hiding, but he rests his chin on her shoulder and wraps his arm around her waist too, like he’s enjoying it. Fuse blushes and Arvid either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She bets it’s the second, given how many times he’s caught them close to each other in the last few weeks. 

She’s not sure why she still cares, honestly. But she does, and as with everything Eret influences, she’s learning to accept it as it is. 

“Looking for Aurelia.” Arvid shrugs. “Fish ran dry, all the dragons are really hungry, apparently.” 

“She went to pick up Stoick, I think.” Eret sighs, “you want to wait for her?” 

“Sure,” Arvid points Wing to the barn. 

“If that’s ok,” Eret mumbles nearly in Fuse’s ear and she jumps, her hand landing on the arm around her waist. 

“It’s fine,” she shrugs, twisting gently out of his grip. He checked with her because he wants to be alone and he’d ask Arvid to leave if she asked him to. She knows that. 

And she wants him to, almost, except she’s not sure what she’d do and she doesn’t like that feeling. As much as she’s fine with Eret overwhelming her, she hasn’t really accepted the idea that she’ll end up overwhelmed. 


	29. Fuse and Eret 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuse POV. Takes place the morning after Chapter 56. 'Tis nsfw. Eret is a man now.

Eret flies like he used to at dragon races before Hoffersons were told to stop coming. Well, the term used was ‘strongly encouraged’ but Fuse knows the difference. More than that, it was the first thing that ever made her think that an adult could be lying. Everyone was mad about losing, but they couldn’t say it and Ingrid seemed to know it too because she kept showing up.

But Fuse missed watching Eret fly.

“Sorry,” Eret shouts over the wind as they approach the only granite cliff on the island. He’s windblown and smiling, his cheeks red from the cold or the sun, maybe both. If it weren’t for the sling under his right arm, she could almost believe he’d never been hurt.

“Why are you apologizing?” She starts guiding Hotgut down and Eret follows on Bang, a little too fast, and his silhouette hurtling into crackling lava flashes on the inside of Fuse’s eyelids. She shakes it off. He’s here and fine and almost healed, nothing is gained by revisiting it all the time.

She’s never been stuck on something she couldn’t change before, and she doesn’t like it. What she feels has always been in line with what she saw or heard or touched, but when she looks at Eret with that excited ambition in his eyes, all she can think about is the day she knew he was gone. She keeps expecting it to fade, but it won’t. If anything, it’s worse than ever today when they’re away from Berk and no one else is here to corroborate that he’s real and breathing right in front of her.

“I got excited and left you in the dust back there,” he hops off Bang when he lands, stumbling a step and swinging his left arm in a circle like he’s stretching. “Or the breeze. Whichever.”

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” she climbs off of Hotgut and pats her shoulder, signaling that she can distance herself from the impending explosion.

Not that there’s going to be an explosion today, Fuse kept her word and brought nothing more than a flint to start a fire if they have to, but she doesn’t want to throw off Hotgut’s routine.

Especially since she knows so well what it’s like to be off of the usual routine.

Fuse isn’t sure when her hands started shaking. Or not shaking so much as moving unintentionally, almost curiously, like they’re too empty and looking for something to do. Her mind is starting to follow in weird, obtrusive little ways that she hasn’t felt since before she accidentally burned her first eyebrow off. This morning she almost pulled Darren’s chair out from under him at breakfast for no reason other than wanting to see him fall because he said something mean about someone that isn’t any of her business. Her hands made it to the back of the chair before she caught herself and stopped.

“You ok?” Eret’s voice snaps her out of her own head and he walks over to her, resting his left hand easily on her shoulder and squeezing. His fingers are cold from the flight but carefully strong, his thumb rubbing absentmindedly over her collar bone through her shirt. 

He’s very tactile, even more than he was before the accident, and it calms her down more than he knows. It’s something she couldn’t have predicted or imagined, especially because it’s strange to her that he’s so insistent about touching her shoulder or holding her hand or hugging her even when people are watching. And people are always watching, there’s always a sibling or a parent in the next room or rolling their eyes when Eret pouts for a kiss. 

They’re alone now. 

“What?” She blinks at him and he cocks his head, narrowing cool blue eyes that look brighter against the thick red of his eyelashes.

“Are you ok? You’re kind of staring at nothing while frowning.” He touches her chin with the pad of his thumb and it brushes against her lower lip with a tickle that sends a bright bolt of electricity down her spine. “Am I annoying you? Am I in the way? Or something? I did kind of just invite myself along. I’ve never scouted anything but—well, you know, the giant island—”

“Stop,” she cuts him off, backing away enough to look at his sling and his bright red scar, peeking out from the collar of his shirt. Those are new. They’re painful looking reminders that a post-dragon-island-explosion Eret is healing right in front of her.

“Sorry,” he shakes his head, “I should have guessed I’d be horrible at scouting.” He turns to face the cliff and tips his head up to look at it. Bang does the same and Eret frowns at him. “You could go hang out with Hotgut, bud. I don’t think we need your help.”

Bang looks off in the direction of the beach and back at Eret, glancing at Fuse with an all too familiar worry, like the boy will disappear if he takes his eyes off of him. Fuse waves the dragon off and is still shocked when he listens, hopping a couple of times before taking off and diving through the trees. A blast echoes back to them and Eret shakes his head.

“I think he missed flying too. Not that Stoick hasn’t been hogging him plenty, but I’d at least like to cling to the idea that he might like me more.” Eret laughs and Fuse recognizes it as one of those jokes where he talks badly about himself. She doesn’t really understand them, but she likes the way his voice dips towards the end and the way he looks at her, like he’s welcoming her to laugh.

“Of course he likes you more.” Fuse has also noticed that complimenting Eret goes better if she stays in the realm of obvious. Anything else gets brushed off or shrugged aside with another not quite joke.

“Yeah, especially since I lost weight,” he rubs his stomach with a twisted little grimace, “I think he’s the only one happy about it.” He sighs. Fuse looks down at his hand on his stomach, under his sling, and she can’t help but remember the scars under his shirt. Touching them makes him feel real, even though he’s been twitching away since he noticed his ribs showing through a couple days after getting his bandages off.

Of course he’s always been skinny, it’s nothing new, but Fuse can’t help but notice that the angle of his jaw is more fragile and the muscles in his left arm are more wiry than rounded. She doesn’t like it any more than Eret seems to, it makes him look more like the boy she imagines in her head, the clueless one who she tipped too much at the forge and never really noticed her. She worries that if he had died, that’s how she’d remember him and she hates it as much as she hates how she keeps coming back to it. He’s here, she doesn’t need to think about the alternative. 

“You never weighed too much for him to begin with.” She shrugs.

“Thanks,” he sighs, rolling his eyes like he doesn’t mean it and turning back to face the cliff. “Let’s talk about the cliff, it has less potential to damage what’s left of my self-esteem.” He pats it and looks at her expectantly. “So…”

“What?” She tucks her hair behind her ear and he raises an eyebrow, corner of his mouth tilting playfully, like he’s going to make one of those gentle jokes at her expense.

“Aren’t we here for you to scout the cliff?” He grins, but it’s a little hesitant. He’s still worried about her, which doesn’t make any sense because she’s fine. She’s not the one still in a sling two months later. “Really, are you mad at me? You’re acting really…quiet.” He reaches for her arm again, pulling her in by her elbow and kissing her on the forehead with careful, chapped lips.

She’s always quiet. Or at least she is when he’s not prodding her to talk. And even though it’s the truth, telling him that now would feel like lying.

“I’m not mad at you.” She bites her lip.

All she has to do is convince Eret she can’t do it. Because even though there’s a strong angled fault behind the middle of the width that would help the granite crumble to the interior, it’d take a large charge in a boring hole that she’d have to clear first. And the boring hole would have to be at least two rounds deep.

And she hasn’t fed the family fire in two months now, let alone set anything real off.

Staring at the cliff, her mind starts working before she intentionally allows it, her eyes picking up blue tones in the rock that she can repurpose into something to stabilize later charges. And blue makes her think of the clear sea above an ancient thermal vent, boiling while Eret is nowhere to be found. Big charges make her think of vaporizing volcanic rock, splintering and obscuring the view.

Eret rubs the back of her arm and he’s concerned again, eyebrows knit together and eyes so much more sincere than she deserves. She’s the one who blew him up. He never blamed her like he could have. Like he should have. He definitely shouldn’t be so near the site of the next predicted detonation with her, it’s not safe for him.

She isn’t safe for him.

Her hand is shaking again, dangerous and twitchy, and she pushes on his shoulder so that he’ll let her go. Her face is that anxious blend of too hot and clammy that never makes sense and her heart is pounding fast enough that the world feels slower. Eret makes her feel everything at once, and she can’t decide whether she wants to push him away or pull him close, and she struggles to seem serious and choose the option that’s better for him.

“What’s wrong?” He holds his hand up, surrendering and stepping backwards and she doesn’t know how he can still trust her so much. How can he even be here right now without worrying if he’s going home? “Fuse—”

“I can’t do it,” she looks at the wall and sees it as a series of rifts and crags, all tracing across it in predictable lines where it would crumble. Lines that make her think of Eret’s scars like fault lines where he almost broke apart.

“You can’t do what?” He scans her expression and she can’t seem to smooth it out the way she’d like to. This will pass. There’s no reason for her to still be upset about it. “You can’t blow up the cliff?” He looks over his shoulder at the rock and then back at her, swallowing hard and shaking his head slightly, eyes worried. “That’s fine, you already said you couldn’t, mostly I just wanted an excuse to go flying with you. I’ll just tell the chief you can’t do it, or you can tell him, whatever.” He moves towards her again, hand outstretched and waiting. “But me saying that doesn’t seem to shift that terrified expression on your face, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say there’s something else wrong.”

Relief and guilt flood her chest simultaneously, because he says things that she couldn’t dream of and because he can read her mind when no one else even tries. And because she didn’t stop him, because she built the thing that hurt him so bad.

“I can’t…” She doesn’t like to start talking without knowing where she’s going and this is why. Her sentence fizzles out halfway, like someone watered down the powder. Like someone stopped her before she hurt something and she’s not sure how to also be that person, how to have and stop the same idea.

“Hey, Fuse, it’s fine.” Eret radiates concern and his face is always so open, so readable. He wasn’t mad at her, ever, not even when he was too bruised and broken to sit on his own. She doesn’t understand. “I’ll tell the chief if you want, I really just wanted to go flying.” He shrugs, sheepish, like this is somehow, impossibly, his fault. “Well, I wanted to go flying with you so I kind of volunteered you for something. We can leave, if you want, that’s fine.”

“You’re apologizing.” She blinks.

He still doesn’t make any sense to her.

“You’re upset,” he scratches his head, wrinkling his nose, animated like he would be in her imagination, “I figured it was my fault.”

Her mouth opens and closes as she tries to reach for some lie, something that will shove this day back on track. He just wanted to fly. She told everyone she can’t blow the cliff, even if it’d be easy, even if the island needs it. 

The island needs Eret more.

“You almost died.” It doesn’t fall out, she throws it, and it’s one of the few bombs she’s thrown that doesn’t impact at all. He just stares at her, frowning slightly and pulling the new, red scar on his temple tight. “I thought you were dead. It was like you were dead.”

She’s repeating herself. Each time she says it, it hits deeper, like she’s boring out access to something soft that will take the impact more effectively. Her hands are shaking and it makes her want to touch him, to prove that he’s as solid as he looks, standing wary in front of her.

“I’m fine—”

“You’re not,” she shakes her head, “you weren’t, it was like were dead—”

“Hey,” he puts his hand on her cheek and it’s warm now, warm and soft in a way that’s entirely wrong. He’s supposed to have forge calluses and axe calluses and cuts and scrapes from helping everyone all the time. His hand centers her anyway, even if it doesen’t calm her down. It makes her look at him and that’s just another reason for her heart to stutter. “Fuse. I’m fine, ok? I’m fine.” He grabs her hand and places it on his chest, over his heart that’s muffled by the extra layers of his sling but definitely beating. 

He goes back to stroking her cheek. Too gently. Like she’s the one who’s going to break. And they’re alone. 

Even this guilt can’t stop her from being happy to get him alone. 

She kisses him and his heartbeat speeds up against her hand through his muffled sound of surprise against her lips. His hand slides to the back of her neck to pull her into him and his bandaged arm presses uncomfortably into her stomach. She pulls back, or tries to at least, her hands shaking with the nauseous fear that she’s going to hurt him again. It only half works because Eret follows, kissing her neck with warm determination.

“Your arm—”

“Doesn’t hurt,” his stubble drags across her skin and makes her breath catch as his arm wraps around her waist and holds her there. “Come here.”

The last two months have been difficult and confusing in a lot of ways and being so close to Eret while he was so fragile was a large part of that. Sleeping next to him was the only way she got any sleep, really, because she knew he was safe and her rebellious subconscious couldn’t tell her that he wasn’t. But he was touching her the whole time with a warm, tactless hand trying to do the work of two.

And she feels strange and guilty for noticing him while he was healing, but especially since the deep bruises on his ribs faded entirely, she’s enjoyed the fact that he’s been largely shirtless. As much as she hated how he flinched when he moved his arm wrong, she appreciated the faded freckles along his shoulders and the way his stomach twitches when he laughs.

He’s not flinching now, he’s trailing his lips up and down her neck, nudging her hair to the side as his grip slides from her waist to her hip. She wants it lower. He sucks like he’s trying to leave a mark and a whisper of teeth graze across her skin, just enough to feel real. Immediate.

“I thought you wanted to leave.” She doesn’t want to leave, but staying feels like a decision she’s not sure she’ll get the chance to think through with her actions moving faster than her intentions. She wants to prove to herself that he’s ok, that he’s a permanent fixture, that there’s nothing temporary or endangered about him.

“We can do this. This is a fine idea.” He noses the corner of her jaw and his breath is cool against the damp side of her neck. She’s not sure when he moved her, but the cliff introduces itself to the back of her shoulders and Eret presses himself against her, his weight comfortingly real. 

He nibbles her ear hums into it when her hand slides under his shirt, fingertips smoothing over a fireworm scar.

And he feels solid. Solid and warm and alive.

She wants to feel more of him. All of him. It’s one of those new moments when her hand moves before she tells it to, landing on his ass and holding him tighter against her. His yelp is half groan and she kisses him again, nipping at his lower lip.

It’s nice to touch him somewhere new, soothing because it feels so substantial. It’s nicer when his hips push against hers, a shadow of the instinct she hasn’t forgotten from that night in her bedroom. She didn’t sleep that night either and the way his tongue is almost lazily tangling with hers makes her revisit what might have happened if he hadn’t caught himself. What was almost scientific curiosity then is closer to need now. It makes her want more, something else official to anchor him here, to this moment instead of to the past.

“What are you doing?” His voice is low and distracted, if nervous, and when she moves her hand from his ass to his stomach, it twitches, his hips jolting against hers. She presses back against him and he groans through her deepening the kiss. Her hands trace the plains of his chest, letting scars be landmarks instead of reminders of her guilt.

He kisses her harder, more confident from the attention when before he would have backed off and stuttered while turning that adorable shade of red. Making him blush is more reliable than his words, which twist and turn against whatever he’s mad at at the moment, but she doesn’t want him to blush now. She wants him to just exist, to let go. 

His hand is still polite against her waist and it’s not enough. 

She wants him impolite. She wants him to act without thinking. She nudges her hips against his and he inhales sharply. She does it again and he groans, leaning more purposefully against her. His knee slides between hers as he shifts to the side slightly and that’s even better. His sling isn’t in the way as much and more than that, she can feel his quick breathing, the contented rumble deep in his chest when her fingers curl in his hair.

And when he moves there’s the firm warmth of him, lengthening in his pants and pressing against her hip.

She’s almost worried about squishing it or cutting off the blood flow and she readjusts, trying to take some of the pressure off of it. Eret gasps, losing rhythm in the kiss as he grinds forward more urgently, his hand clamped tight on her waist. She pulls his hips against hler, almost experimentally, and he shudders, biting his lip and taking a deep breath.

“Just a second,” he huffs out, eyes squinted shut like he’s in pain. 

“What?” She pushes some of his hair out of his face, kissing his forehead because it makes her feel comfortable when he does it to her. She rubs his shoulder and shifts against him and he sighs, high pitched and twitchy.

Twitchy has always been bad in Fuse’s world. Anything less than sure handed quiet meant premature activation and probably pain. But Eret just looks alive. And no, she’s not sure she’ll ever feel comfortable trusting him with dry firewood but there’s something inspiring in how safe he feels around her. It’s trust she doesn’t deserve, but she wants to.

“Oh Gods.” He groans, falling slack against her. His knee twitches. He slumps forward, burying his face in her neck. “I’m so sorry. I don’t—my right arm’s in a cast and I—oh gods, I don’t want to say that but—”

“What’s wrong?” She tugs his hair, trying to see his face, but he wraps his arm around her and burrows deeper into hiding. When she shifts slightly, he doesn’t feel the same against the outside of her thigh. Deflated maybe, like she did squish it, and it’s sort of throbbing, almost scaldingly hot even through their clothes. “Did I mess that up?”

“ _Mess_ what up?” He snorts, miserable, his breath cool against the overheated skin under her ear.

“You know,” she bites her lip, touching the waistband of his pants and plucking at its tie, “your–”

“Fuse!” He blurts her name, staring down at her hand and then back at her face with a mixture of embarrassment and confusion. Usually, she likes him confused, but right now it just reminds her how out of her depth she is.

She might be less clueless than Eret is, but unsuccessfully ignoring the majority of her brothers’ conversations doesn’t make her an expert.

“What?” She takes her hand away from his pants and lets it hang by her side. He sighs again, grimacing slightly, nose wrinkled in disgust. “What is going on, Eret? You’re acting like I hurt you or–”

“What? No, gods no,” he tries to placate her, face going from dangerously pale to bright red as he stutters, patting her on the back of the hand when he lets her go, “you didn’t–the exact opposite, really–I don’t, I mean, how do I even say–”

“Just say it,” she bites her lip and tries not to feel deflated. This is what happens when she doesn’t think. She needs to figure out how to slow back down and even just thinking that makes her think of bombs and fire and a spindly, determined silhouette jumping into a lake of lava.

He’s here. He might be mad at her, but he’s right here, staring at her with all that anxious embarrassment that she hates to accidentally cause.

“I just uh…came in my pants?” His voice cracks and he clears his throat with a cough, looking down at himself and gesturing to her. “You–I mean there was just a lot going on and you–the grinding…” He pats her hand again and even the fingers sticking out of his sling are bright red. “I’m sorry.”

Fuse blinks at him.

This is unexpected. She didn’t think that could happen, really, she figured it would take more than just kissing him. It makes her feel powerful and disappointed at the same time, her own core prickling with an unattended to kind of heat that only gets worse knowing that she could feel him against her when he went over the edge.

She shifts against the warmth of his faded firmness and it sends a bittersweet pang through her core. She was so close and it still doesn’t feel like close enough.

“We can go,” he sighs, awfully disappointed for someone who just got off, “I won’t bring this up ever again, I swear. I’m so sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” She cocks her head and Eret blinks.

“I just…humped your leg like a terror in heat.” He gestures at himself, “to–you know, to the point where I really need to go clean up, so I’m just going to go do that. I guess.”

She only half hears him, honestly, because she’s trying to make sense of the situation, mechanically.

“That really felt good enough?” She catches his shoulders, leaning in like she’s going to kiss him and feeling how it presses them together. What was hard before is still slack and she feels how his pants are sticking slightly to his skin. “Oh, you said you needed to clean up.”

“Please,” he grimaces again and she lets him go, watching as he stumbles slightly, like his feet are numb as he slinks off in the vague direction of the beach.

Fuse leans back against the cliff and drums her fingertips on the granite, trying to work through what just happened. It’s harder to look back than forward, especially since a lot of her decision making was hazy at best. It’s still hazy. She feels as twitchy as he was when he bucked into her and…came.

She’ll use his word.

The urge to touch him hasn’t gotten any smaller. If anything, it’s larger, because she does feel halfway cheated, like she only had half of that experience. Incomplete data doesn’t sit well with her and she thinks of how to pose the question. It’s still odd to her that Eret can be so tactile all the time but so awkward now. 

She probably should feel awkward, but she doesn’t. She wants that again, she wants more. 

Rationally, she knows that’s the point. It’s always been the point and she never had any delusions about boys or what it means to like one. She has older brothers. And Eret grew up so much in the last year that it was only natural to think about it. Especially because he’s so open with those broad shoulders and long legs and scarred, careful fingers that are always playing with her clothes or hair. And she trusts him and his gentle hugs and the earnest way he makes sure she’s ok.

Plus, even though she doesn’t quite understand how, she just got quite the enthusiastic reaction out of him. And she likes that. It feels like a discovery, a firework that went off unexpectedly and now she has to know how.

“Hey,” Eret shuffles back out of the woods, shoulders slumped forward like a dragon that knows it’s in trouble, “I just wanted to apologize, again–”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Fuse tries to cut him off, but he’s regurgitating something that he rehearsed, like a gronckle emptying itself on command.

“–because I didn’t mean to do that, not that accidental uh…whatever you want to call it is an excuse, I’m not making excuses.”

“Eret,” she tries again and he perks up at the sound of his name. It makes her think of when he said he liked how she says it and rekindles the tight sort of urgency in her chest when she looks at him. She wants to say it when he’s closer, when he’s groaning and losing himself again, pressing himself into her. “Can we try that again?”

“My apology?” He frowns and nods, thinking, neck bobbing when he swallows. “Sure.”

“No,” her cheeks flush but she’s too curious and committed and her mouth is getting ahead of her brain. “Can you come here? I have to see how I did that.”

His eyes widen and his cheeks flush, approaching his hair color.

“You want…I mean…” He coughs, “I could—we could do that.” The few steps between them take forever and Eret looks her up and down in a hungry way he hasn’t before, like he’s seeing something for the first time. His hand hovers in between them and he scans her expression, so hesitant it makes her want to lunge at him. “I—are you sure?”

“Yes,” she nods, glancing down at the slightly darker damp fabric on the front of his pants. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t sure.”

“That’s true,” he mumbles, hand curling tight in the side of her shirt as he ducks down to kiss her neck, too gentle against the excitement welling in her chest. She doesn’t want his cautious. “Are you sure I’m not dead right now?” He laughs against the skin half revealed by her neckline and the question stabs her heart with a pang that quickly dissolves into urgency.

“Absolutely,” she nudges the side of his hip with her knuckles and he doesn’t move. He’s solid. Solid and warm and tentatively moving her back towards the wall, “Come here.”

“Just a second,” he leans into her, bandaged arm rigid against her stomach as he kisses his way back to her mouth, his hand moving from her waist to her hip and then, with a twitchy little jolt, her ass. He squeezes and sighs against her lips, “ok, I see the appeal from this direction.”

It’s new and warm but not enough. He’s moving too slow and too gentle and thinking too hard.

“Eret, sit down,” she breathes against his lips, pulling her hands out of his shirt to press on his shoulders. He listens, a little bonelessly and a lot out of breath, his fingertips dragging over her hip as his butt touches the ground.

His knees are up, slightly, his feet flat on the ground in front of him, but there’s still room for her to sit straddling his hips, knees folded on either side of him. She feels like she used to when she set charges, that blood racing, giddy thrill that she’s about to make something happen.

“Oh my gods, what are you doing?” He doesn’t give her a chance to answer, cupping her jaw and pulling her down to him. It’s like he can’t get close enough either because his hand is everywhere, pushing her hair away from her neck to suck at the skin of her shoulder, tracing her side with feather light touches. Grabbing her hip and pulling her down against him with enough purpose to add to the building tenseness between her legs. 

“Wait,” she stills him with a hand on his shoulder, pressing it back against the cliff. He looks dazed, eyes dark and fixed on her and she bites her lip, exhaling through her nose and trying to refocus. She wants to figure him out, to put reason to what just happened.

“Ok?” He frowns, thinking too hard again. 

She nods and sits a little more firmly on his hips and pressing herself against him. It’s not what it was before, but there’s something still achingly warm about it and she brushes the inside of her thigh against it, shifting and trying to make it react. Eret groans, hand twitching on her lower back even as there’s no distinct movement in his pants. 

“Is that right?” She cocks her head and Eret laughs like she’s hurting him. “It’s not, is it?” She freezes and settles against him again, trying for the angle she had before. Eret winces and a bubble of unrestrained panic rises in her throat, competing with everything else. “What?”

“Hey, it’s fine,” he rubs her back, shifting against the wall. He winces again, awkward, and she never should have stopped kissing him. It’s like all the heat he’d built up is gone now and he’s back to practicing so much restraint she could scream. “It’s just…sensitive.”

“Sensitive?” She sits back on his legs slightly, trying to ignore the way that moving away from him makes the slow building pressure between her legs feel worse. That’s not helping anything, it’s not making him any more obvious to her, dealing with it wouldn’t make sense of what just happened. 

“Yeah, it’s just–it takes a minute to…you know.” 

“I don’t.” 

“To uh…be ready. Again.” 

“Oh.” Ready. She likes that. 

“Yeah,” he mutters under his breath, tone stilted even as he licks his lips and looks her over again with slow roaming eyes. It makes her feel hot, like she’s too close to the fire, and she’s always chased that feeling. She misses that feeling. 

It’s not meant to spark when she yanks her shirt over her head and drops it on the ground, but the effect is as instantaneous as any flint she’s ever struck. Eret sputters, eyes wide, and his startled expression is satisfying like the crackle dry kindling makes when it lights on fire. 

“Does that help?” She asks, stomach fluttering as she reaches for the laces on the front of her bindings. 

“Yeah,” he catches her wrist and she expects him to stop her, to be shy and sweet and cautious, “that’ll help.” 

Some bombs take longer in more heat to forget the sum of their parts and function as a whole but the familiar victory of ignition swells in her when his hand moves to her chest. Eret nearly growls against her cheek, cupping her chest with a gentle palm and stroking across the fabric with his thumb. Her nipple peaks immediately and the heat in her stomach flares higher when he flicks his fingertip across it through the layers of linen, kissing down her neck with a drag of stubble that makes her squirm against him. 

“This is a two handed knot, isn’t it?” He tugs at the tie on her bindings, kissing the skin above them and nuzzling against her chest. He strokes her nipple again and she moans when something clenches deep in her stomach. He twitches against her inner thigh at the sound and she rocks down against him, trying again for whatever angle made him fall apart. He groans against her chest, pulling the top of her bindings down as much as he can and kissing the newly exposed skin. 

She doesn’t feel close enough, it’s still not real enough. She wants something permanent. She wants to anchor him to this moment and to her. 

“Are you ready?” She reaches between them, placing her hand on his length through his pants. It throbs in time with her core, dense and scalding under her grip. Eret bucks into the touch, kissing under her jaw and stilling her hip with a hand that only reluctantly leaves her chest. 

“A little too ready,” his voice cracks when she strokes him through his clothes. 

“Ok,” she nods, standing up before he can ask why and pushing her pants down along with her underwear. They catch around one ankle, but that’s fine, they’re out of the way when she straddles him again, fumbling for the ties on his pants with twitchy fingers. 

“Fuse,” he squeaks her name and she looks up at him, heel of her hand resting on his length. It’s so hard that she’d think it was made out of something sturdier than flesh and blood if it weren’t for the heart pounding pulse running through it. “What are you doing?”

“I’m taking off your pants.” She doesn’t have enough room to feel embarrassed when he looks her up and down with a slow, heated glance, like he’s memorizing her. “Is that ok?” 

“Why?” His voice is as stiff as the hand trying not to touch her but he relaxes into a kiss with all that trust that she doesn’t deserve. 

“Because you almost died,” she answers as honestly as she can manage when she’s so excited and sad and nervous all at once, “because I thought you were dead and I…” 

“Hey,” he strokes her cheek, “I’m fine.” 

“Can I prove it?” She reaches for his pants again and he doesn’t stop her this time, “I just need to feel you.” 

“Ok, yeah that’s…please,” he lifts his hips for her to pull his pants down, shoulders braced against the cliff face. “That’s–you aren’t just doing this because I almost died a virgin, right?” 

“No.” She doesn’t mind the question, especially because it becomes unimportant when she gets his pants down far enough to reveal his length. It lifts slowly once unrestrained and she bites her lip, wrapping her hand around it and dragging her grip slowly to its base. It throbs in her hand, as alive as the red-faced boy its attached to and her self-restraint fails her again, making her state the obvious. “I want you.” 

“You have me,” he kisses her as she scoots forward to position herself over him, her hand shaking slightly because she almost didn’t have him. She’s not going to let that happen again. 

With that bit of resolve, she holds him steady and sinks down onto him, gritting her teeth against the painful but mostly strange feeling of intrusion. She knew it would hurt, but she wasn’t ready for how odd it is to be full or how warm he feels inside of her, bordering on too hot, like he’ll burn her. It stings when she’s fully seated and she adjusts her knees, wincing at a piece of gravel introducing itself to her shin. 

“Are you ok?” Eret kisses her cheek, gently stroking her shoulder and back. 

“Yeah,” she nods, bracing herself on his shoulders and pushing herself up about halfway. The sting returns but fades further when she sits back down and Eret twitches into her with a whispered groan. She does it again and his eyes roll back in his head. “Are you?” 

His answering moan reignites the warmth in her core that she thought was gone and she bites her lip, rocking forward a little faster. His hand finds her hip and he pushes up into her, deep enough that it almost knocks the air out of her lungs. 

He finally feels close enough. 

A couple of uncoordinated thrusts later, Fuse finds a rhythm, rocking forward as he pushes up, his feet planted against the ground and his face buried in her neck. Her stomach tightens with each of his raw, ragged breaths and she can feel it building with each drag of him against her. It feels like he’s growing, if that’s possible, warmer and harder inside of her as he gasps against her neck. 

“I’m…” His fingernails dig into her hip and she kisses the scar on his temple, almost sympathetic as he bucks into her harder, an edge of sting re-introducing itself. “I’m going to–”

“It’s fine,” she kisses his cheek, clasping her hands around the back of his neck and rocking faster. 

He tenses and holds her down onto him, moaning into her shoulder as the warmth tenses and spreads inside of her, his length throbbing like a heartbeat. She feels exhausted, like she just climbed a mountain and a bead of sweat drips down between her shoulder blades as Eret’s arm wraps around her in a tight hug. He’s still twitching, his hips pressing against her even as the feeling of fullness fades. 

“You…I mean,” he looks up at her, kissing her cheek and resting his forehead against hers, “you good?” 

“Yeah,” she’s tired in a bone deep way that makes her hope she remembers this tonight if she jolts awake to a vision of him falling. She hears Hotgut warble by the beach and glances up at the sun, swearing under her breath. “We have to get back,” she stands up off of him, her knees shaking when they take her weight. 

He’s…damp and her breath catches with the thought that she left some of herself on him. And some of him is in her and she’s going to have to get herbs from the healer. She wasn’t thinking. Her whole body feels warm and sore and tired and maybe she needs to not think more often. She can’t possibly imagine him dead when she feels like this, not when her entire body is imprinted with his touch. 

“Huh?” He uses wall to brace his shoulders against and pull his pants back up. He’s looking at her like he’s not quite sure she’s real and it makes her want to climb on him all over again. 

“Dinner,” she steps into the other leg of her pants, kicking her boot out of the tangle of fabric and forcing it on over her foot. “With my parents.”

“Oh shit,” he jumps up so fast he almost falls, staggering and catching himself on the wall. “Right. Fuck. That’s today.” He watches her pick up her shirt with dazed eyes, “this was today. This was…now. Oh Gods, your parents.” 

“Are you ok?” She almost tells him that they can skip it, but she wants that formality too. 

“Never better,” he shakes his head. “Let’s go.”


End file.
